Re-Take The Cabin

[shoddyworksucks]

Still, somehow, one can close their eyes and any thread on the Escapist will be a Mass Effect thread, or will become one.

Anyway, I saw Cabin in the Woods and thought it was good, but had some issues with the film overall (SPOILERS!):

1. The first act is dull. It establishes the group, setting, and the shadowy government, but fails to provide any real characterization. The film does get around to commenting on how the characters' personalities are artificially altered to force them into genre conventions, but it's only addressed at a superficial level and the audience never gets to see the personalities of the characters really change in a natural way.

2. The film has an obnoxious habit of explaining everything. I really liked the scene in the basement with the teens messing around with a variety of creepy artifacts, since it was a great nod to genre tropes that was handled in a subtle way. As the film goes on, however, we (the audience) are bombarded with expository dialogue and flashbacks explaining why that scene was important, even though the audience this film was made for would understand it immediately. This happens a lot, which says to me, as a movie-goer, that Whedon and Co. weren't confident in the story's ability to tell itself, and decided to shoe-horn in expository dialogue to cover everything.

3. The first act is where Whedon's most obnoxious habits are at their worst. Since little of consequence is actually occurring, Whedon fills the script with a truckload of over-stylized dialogue. Now, writers who utilize stylized dialogue, such as Kevin Smith, Diablo Cody, and Quentin Tarantino, aren't inherently bad. However, their style is extremely subjective; you either love it or you don't. I hate Whedon's dialogue, since it turns its characters into quip machines, and most of Whedon's cast can't deliver this dialogue in even a semi-natural way. In the film, only Whitford really feels at home with the sitcom-esque dialogue he's given.

4. Whedon's biggest sin in this film is the stoner character, which is also representative of his worst habit, in my opinion: the Whedon fan self-insert character. It's total fan-baiting, and this character serves to inflate the ego of his fans, who believe they're too smart for whatever genre Whedon's indulging in. However, the character's ability to see through the ruse is based upon contrivances; if a shadowy organization can house millions of horror creatures and create invisible force fields, why would they leave easily found cameras around the house? This character seems to undermine your opinion, Bob, since he clearly represents the self-aware genre fan who is underrepresented in horror movies.

Those are my issues with the film itself. I take issue with some fan's assertion that the movie is filled with tonal shifts and twists, since I found the story itself to be very straightforward, only rolling out explanations of why things are happening at a regular basis without ever turning the plot on its head. As a fan of horror movies, I saw the work as more of a love-letter to horror movies that also critiqued its studio-mandated tropes and cliches. Oh, and the ancient Gods thing: I saw that as Whedon's Lovecraft reference first and foremost, and as a symbol for studio heads second.

 

[Eric Morales]

Ah yes, the Mass Effect business again, nobody bludgeons a strawman to death quite like MovieBob.

 

[Podunk]

There is, of course, a certain fiendishly delightful symmetry to this particular film to come out telling this particular story in the same timeframe as the remarkably enduring "Re-Take Mass Effect" debacle; which finds game developer Bioware scrambling to placate their infuriated Elder Gods, whose fury at their subjects' latest offering failing to meet their exacting specifications

Poor, poor Bob. Poor Bob. He still doesn't get it. I kind of figured after the last couple times he prattled on about "Re-Take Mass Effect"(Or, as anyone not absolutely fixated with the semantics of using the word 'Retake' would call it, "Mass Effect still has a shitty ending") someone might have explained it to him, or he might look it up on his own. But no, he's still stuck on the word "Re-Take" I think. 'Exacting specifications' was never the issue. People(The majority of people, because you can never speak for all people) just want something that doesn't suck. It doesn't have to be exact, or satisfy some checklist, it just needs to not be a terrible and fundamentally flawed piece of interactive media that is at odds with the rest of the work. It's very hypocritical to heap criticism on, say, Twilight for example because you think it has issues, then turn around and say Mass Effect 3 is somehow above that, and entirely beyond criticism because art. It may be more fun for you to talk about the fan reaction than the game itself and the issues it has, but that doesn't excuse a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue at hand.

Or maybe he's just hatin', because these bitches are muscling in to his criticism/game overthinkin' territory?

 

[shoddyworksucks]

Poor, poor Bob. Poor Bob. He still doesn't get it. I kind of figured after the last couple times he prattled on about "Re-Take Mass Effect"(Or, as anyone not absolutely fixated with the semantics of using the word 'Retake' would call it, "Mass Effect still has a shitty ending") someone might have explained it to him, or he might look it up on his own. But no, he's still stuck on the word "Re-Take" I think.

Sigh. This stuff again? Why is it that when someone takes issue with certain (though extreme) fan reactions to the whole Mass Effect debacle, the counter is always, "Well, you just don't get it,"? I myself don't agree with the fan reaction, but I understand it and why it exists. I played the game through to completion, and it didn't particularly like it either. But there are people out there who played the game and enjoyed the ending. Do they not "get it" either, even though they experienced the game first-hand?

At this point, the whole debate is dominated by an extreme minority of fans who have taken to absurd arguments to justify their rhetoric. It's too bad, because I understand (and many others do as well, I suspect) that not every disappointed fan embodies that extreme viewpoint. I think that the issue of whether BioWare should change ME3's ending or not will, and should, be between that company and their fans. I may disagree with it on a philosophical level, but in reality it doesn't impact me in the slightest. Whatever works for those groups, I suppose.

But writing off any opposing argument or opinion as simply not "getting it" comes across as a means to avoid a real discussion and weakens the argument of those more moderate fans who just want a better ending that gives them the emotional payoff they were looking for without resorting to illogical arguments about ME3 being broken or that BioWare was somehow knowingly manipulating its fanbase (or sending complaints to the FTC or BBB and filing lawsuits, etc.).

Also: the issue isn't about fans critiquing the ending of that game. I don't know why that's even being brought up. It's about the methods some extreme fans are utilizing in order to force BioWare to change the ending.

Tl;dr: Stop saying people don't "get" the ME3 argument, please. It's not that complicated.

 

[Podunk]

Sigh. This stuff again? Why is it that when someone takes issue with certain (though extreme) fan reactions to the whole Mass Effect debacle, the counter is always, "Well, you just don't get it,"? I myself don't agree with the fan reaction, but I understand it and why it exists. I played the game through to completion, and it didn't particularly like it either. But there are people out there who played the game and enjoyed the ending. Do they not "get it" either, even though they experienced the game first-hand?

At this point, the whole debate is dominated by an extreme minority of fans who have taken to absurd arguments to justify their rhetoric. It's too bad, because I understand (and many others do as well, I suspect) that not every disappointed fan embodies that extreme viewpoint. I think that the issue of whether BioWare should change ME3's ending or not will, and should, be between that company and their fans. I may disagree with it on a philosophical level, but in reality it doesn't impact me in the slightest. Whatever works for those groups, I suppose.

But writing off any opposing argument or opinion as simply not "getting it" comes across as a means to avoid a real discussion and weakens the argument of those more moderate fans who just want a better ending that gives them the emotional payoff they were looking for without resorting to illogical arguments about ME3 being broken or that BioWare was somehow knowingly manipulating its fanbase (or sending complaints to the FTC or BBB and filing lawsuits, etc.).

Also: the issue isn't about fans critiquing the ending of that game. I don't know why that's even being brought up. It's about the methods some extreme fans are utilizing in order to force BioWare to change the ending.

Tl;dr: Stop saying people don't "get" the ME3 argument, please. It's not that complicated.

Yes. To most of that, anyways.

My central issue is that I just don't agree with saying that it's about exacting specifications, when that has never been something that people have been clamoring for. The 'exacting specifications' part came about in the first round of articles and news about the Mass Effect ending backlash. 'Exacting standards' is a fabrication, and very few people(because I'm sure there must be some people somewhere who have them, even though I don't know any specifically) have issues with the ME ending and feel this way.

Also, no one is 'forcing' anyone to do anything. People are making their opinions heard and it's at Bioware's sole discretion what exactly they want to do about it. From the get-go I've said that if they just come out and say 'Yes, this is the ending we wanted, here's why it makes sense to us and the implications raised are correct' I'd be more than happy. But they won't(and probably can't) say that about what they've created and instead are electing to expand upon the ending that they originally created. The FCC thing is a bit extreme but I think it's not necessarily a bad thing however it plays out- promises were made again and again that were not delivered upon, and though that may not be the proper channel accountability is important. Donating money to charity or cupcakes to developers don't 'force' anyone to do anything. It's just been about raising awareness of a cause. Is it a bit ridiculous? Yes. Did I participate in any of it? No. But is it really harming anyone, or worth causing so many video game media outlets to cry foul about the point these people are trying to make? I don't think so.

In short, it's not about a difference in opinion, it's about my impression that there is a fundamental misunderstanding over what at least 90% of the people dissatisfied with the ME3 ending is: We would just prefer it to not suck. Love it or hate it, you're entitled to your opinion, but if your basing your opinion around the idea that the 'entitled' Mass Effect fans have some sort of ending criteria checklist in their heads that must be strictly adhered to and no-one will be satisfied until they are, I feel this is not an accurate representation of the issue.

Tl/dr: The reason people are mad about the Mass Effect 3 ending is because they thought it was bad. They are entitled to their opinions, as are everyone else in the world. Everyone should stop trying to make it be about something else.

 

[ex275w]

Poor, poor Bob. Poor Bob. He still doesn't get it. I kind of figured after the last couple times he prattled on about "Re-Take Mass Effect"(Or, as anyone not absolutely fixated with the semantics of using the word 'Retake' would call it, "Mass Effect still has a shitty ending") someone might have explained it to him, or he might look it up on his own. But no, he's still stuck on the word "Re-Take" I think.

Sigh. This stuff again? Why is it that when someone takes issue with certain (though extreme) fan reactions to the whole Mass Effect debacle, the counter is always, "Well, you just don't get it,"? I myself don't agree with the fan reaction, but I understand it and why it exists. I played the game through to completion, and it didn't particularly like it either. But there are people out there who played the game and enjoyed the ending. Do they not "get it" either, even though they experienced the game first-hand?

At this point, the whole debate is dominated by an extreme minority of fans who have taken to absurd arguments to justify their rhetoric. It's too bad, because I understand (and many others do as well, I suspect) that not every disappointed fan embodies that extreme viewpoint. I think that the issue of whether BioWare should change ME3's ending or not will, and should, be between that company and their fans. I may disagree with it on a philosophical level, but in reality it doesn't impact me in the slightest. Whatever works for those groups, I suppose.

But writing off any opposing argument or opinion as simply not "getting it" comes across as a means to avoid a real discussion and weakens the argument of those more moderate fans who just want a better ending that gives them the emotional payoff they were looking for without resorting to illogical arguments about ME3 being broken or that BioWare was somehow knowingly manipulating its fanbase (or sending complaints to the FTC or BBB and filing lawsuits, etc.).

Also: the issue isn't about fans critiquing the ending of that game. I don't know why that's even being brought up. It's about the methods some extreme fans are utilizing in order to force BioWare to change the ending.

Tl;dr: Stop saying people don't "get" the ME3 argument, please. It's not that complicated.

Thank you for this post. While I thought the ending was ridiculous and if Bioware wanted to change due to the feedback it would've been perfectly fine.

The problem was that people pitched a fit a day after the game came out, due to the leaks, not even waiting if Bioware had plans to expand on the ending with their infamous DLC notice at the end. People tried to force the issue sending threats and passive-aggressive cupcakes.

They didn't wait for Bioware to respond to their feedback and wanted their needs catered immediately. Its not that complaining about something is wrong is that the manner in which people complain is wrong.

 

[shoddyworksucks]

So which one is it? Explaining everything or not explaining enough?

You obviously missed my point, that the preponderance of unnecessary expository dialogue points to Whedon's lack of faith in the story. The extraneous dialogue is unnecessary since it adds nothing to the film; it only exists to hammer home plot points that smart viewers already understand.

Also, this seems like an extremely vehement defense (sprinkled with unwarranted personal attacks) given that, at the beginning of the post, I said I liked the movie overall. You can disagree with my issues with the film, and please expound upon them in that case, but this kind of vitriol seems ridiculous.

One: google Cabin in the Woods and "quip", or just "Joss Whedon" and "quip" or "stylized dialogue" and you'll find plenty of people who have the same issue with Whedon that I do. I don't like his style, and no, it's not natural. I hang around bright, funny people, and we don't talk this way. No one outside of a sitcom does. Also of note: I used Diablo Cody as an example of a writer who uses stylized dialogue; that's literally the extent of the comparison I was drawing between the two. You may like Whedon, and fine if you do, but understand that not everyone enjoys his style.

Two: the only matter of real import in the first act are the scenes with the shadow organization. Other than that, it functions EXACTLY like a cliched horror movie. The film's deconstructive take on the genre doesn't really kick in until the second act; the first act merely alludes to it. If you think that the characterization in this first act worked, then fine, we simply have a difference of opinion. The eventual character turns felt abrupt and were only explored in yet more expository dialogue, or having a character suddenly wearing a pair of glasses. I don't feel it was natural or organic.

Three: the stoner character is right about EVERYTHING the entire way through. Plot machinations work around him to simply prove him correct. He basically acts like an audience surrogate who somehow instinctively knows what kind of film he's in. That's an issue for me.

Fourth: I'm sorry, but I'm the target audience for this movie. I have watched a lot of horror movies, and the film's satire and references were obvious to me from the get-go. I don't "get it"? I didn't "pay attention"? My complaints aren't that the movie is confusing or that I don't understand its goals. My complaints are rooted in the techniques the film uses to try and make its point. I think the movie is good overall, but flawed, and flawed in very specific ways. And when compared to other meta-horror films (or horror satire films), those flaws are worth pointing out since some of the film's takes on genre tropes and cliches aren't all that fresh.

 

[DioWallachia]

Funny, I took the Elder Gods more as film producers than I took it as the audience. Movie audiences don't exactly demand formulaic, boring horror movies. Cabin in the Woods' success alone should prove that. Despite Bob's experience of people complaining about the end, it still has an 83% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes... I think it's safe to say that, despite breaking the formula, the movie is a huge success. Which means either the movie proved itself wrong, or that the Elder Gods as Audience theory isn't what the movie was putting out...

And the Mass Effect connection (which, btw, is bordering a bit on obsession. Seriously when you can't even enjoy a perfectly good, unique and interesting horror movie without seeing it as fuel for your ME3 crusade maybe it's time to reconsider things... Just a thought), it still doesn't work.

SPOILERS

The Elder Gods never cared about the quality of the events. While two (out of the four required killings) were killed "properly", one wasn't even killed by the monsters they themselves awakened (killed instead by the fake world the scientists created). And in the end, when it was all going to shit, it was pretty clear that having random security guard just shoot the boy in the face was a PERFECTLY acceptable ending, as long as it was before the virgin. There was no requirement for it being interesting, or consistant with the narrative, or intelligent, or anything. The requirements were simply "each archetype dies in the right order."

You win the Internet. Case closed and no need to keep the thread any longer. A Winner is You.

Except...

"despite breaking the formula"

It does break the formula but technically the people before going in to see the movie actually knew what the movie was about, and because of that, there was expectations for the movie to BE like it was marketed. A game changer.

Just see the trailer. Anyone and their mother knows already the first twist that even the movie itself shows us at the beginning. There are humans monitoring the idiots and for that you already expect that they are the main reason for the idiots to die in the cliche way you saw in other movies. After all, the tagline is "You think you know the story".

This means that the public just got what they were promised and for that, the mass effect 3 analogy falls apart because the game was falsely marketed and it didnt bring the closure it was SUPPOSED to give. Instead we got an ambiguous ending that was most likely a EA mandatory to leave a door open to cash in on the Mass Effect universe in the future.

Then again this is Bob who we are talking about. The same person who hates FPS games to the point of even declaring that they are creatively bankrup (even Metroid Prime games) buuuuuuuut at the same time, he ask Nintendo to make a Mario Paintball game in FIRST PERSON. Only Nintendo is allowed to make games because everything they touch is gold, isnt it Bob?

Seriously, lets use his own words against him. He said in the Game Overthinker that WE are able to do anything if we work together. Alright, lets work together to NOT see any of his videos anymore, he BELIEVES that he has a point instead of showing us the facts like a good THINKER (oh yeah, i saw that episode too, Bob)

If you were Bob, what would be your "revisioned clarification" about the Elder Gods being actually the Audience rather than the Producers? seems that only a producer would care about a particular setpiece or gimmick in such a literal way. Like "Do a parody of The Matrix, when they enter with the shitload of weapons and the slow mo shoot out" and its satisfied by doing the EXACT scene of that movie, played straight but with this movie characters instead.

 

[DioWallachia]

snipy

Excuse me, do you happen to know what other movies uses the "Humans/creatures/Gods manipulating events to satisfy their "Godlike customers"?? Or at least a horror movie that deconstruct the genre.

I want to know that i am not the only person who feels riped off.

EDIT: While we are at it. how would you "fix" this movie? Why you think the justifications for the people actions and sudden characterization shift dont work?

 

[Raesvelg]

Actually you have the one "True ending" with Shepard gasping for breath, the indoctrination theory etc. Bioware might not have intentionally done so but they basically were handed a sequel theory by their fans. In each of the three endings the Normandy escapes. A ME4 doesn't have to be ABOUT Shepard.

But it does have to have an ending that makes it plausible to have a consistent game universe no matter how someone completed the previous game.

Unless you're going to totally invalidate the choice the player made at the end of ME3.

Which really would be taking away the player's choice, unlike the current situation where the player is handed choices they may not like, and a vocal portion of the fanbase seems compelled to complain about it.

The Re-take crowd has several people asking different things. So far as I've read is that the Official statement is an ending that "clarifies the events in the current ending and takes into account the choices made in the past two games". The vocal minority of the vocal majority are the ones clamouring for a Space Jesus happy ending.

I have to laugh at the "official statement" line. There is no hierarchy here, no top-down management that can actually release official statements. It's like Anonymous. You're in Anon if you claim to be Anon, and that's pretty much the way it works with the Re-Take crowd.

And, frankly, most of them that I've seen have been clamoring for Space Jesus. They wrap it up in talks about maintaining continuity of theme, or blather on about plot inconsistencies, and how a different ending might make more sense, but even the ones who vocally state that they're okay with Shepard dying still want an ending where nobody really loses anything.

Except Shepard.

The death of Shepard isn't really what the fans latch onto. What I heard most about and have the most problems with myself is the explosions of the Mass Relays, the stranding of the fleet, the weird logic of the AI, the fact some squad mates that were on the ground with you get teleported into the crashed Normandy, Joker deserting his post and making a run for it with the entire Normandy crew, the entire ending basically being a shot for shot remake of Toppen Tengen Gurren Lagan and so on. Right up until a certain point the ending makes sense. But then there is a huge gear change into nonsense. Right until you meet TIM the ending is basically going as it normally would, final climactic battle, huge space ship fight overhead, etc, but after that it feels like someone came into the studio. Slapped an ending together an shipped it.

The whole bit with Joker is actually one of the only complaints I have with the ending; I have no idea why he'd be heading out in the mass relay network, and I can't really think of a good justification for it.

The rest... The Catalyst's logic is a classic sci-fi trope (much like the rest of Mass Effect), the destruction of the relays is acceptable within the bounds of Clarke's Third Law as applied to Space Magic, and the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann ending is what they want, not what they got.

I mean that literally; functionally every Re-Take argument I've heard at some point incorporates the idea that the complainer in question feels that Shepard should have drop-kicked the Catalyst in the holographic nards and rejected the choice.

Which is pretty much what happens in TTGL.

It's not a matter of artistic choice were talking about here. It's a matter of lots and lots of unexplained plot holes that culminate into a broken ending. An artistic choice would have been to have Shepard Agree with the Reapers and let them assimilate the entire universe because that way Life itself will continue rather than fight and risk killing all life in the galaxy in a devastating war. Hoping that the AI will realize that life will always struggle to better itself and that one day the AI will meet a challenge beyond it's grasp.

There really aren't that many unexplained plot holes. And the ending you describe makes no sense in context; the Reapers don't destroy all organic life, just advanced life. The whole point of ME3 is an attempt to break that cycle.

You keep coming back to the fact that the final choices have nothing to do with the other choices in the game. Of course they don't. What are you trying to prove here? That two separate events with different choices are separated? Well yes. What do you want to prove with that that the event the game has been building up to will happen despite your choice in armour to wear. Well all right you proved that. Now what does that mean? That it was pointless to put any story deviations in the game that it would have been better as a linear rail road?

Because one of the major complaints of the Re-Take crowd is how the ending doesn't reflect their choices.

And the ending almost never reflects choices, really. Since everyone has be to be able to get to the ending, after all. You never want to set up a scenario where making the wrong "choice" an hour into the game means you can't win it, and you only find that out 30 hours later. People would storm your office with torches and pitchforks.

At most, what you can offer is a sort of post-ending epilogue where you see some of the consequences of your choices, as was done in ME2. But those choices still had no effect on the choice you are offered at the ending of ME2. You can give the base to Cerberus, or destroy it. Those are your options. Nothing else.

What they're really complaining about then, albeit somewhat ignorantly, is the lack of that resolving cutscene where we see what happened with the Krogan, etc. They made the choices; their ending is quite possibly vastly different from my ending, all that's missing is the final outcome of those choices, something that Bioware may well have had different plans for that have since been scrapped over the outrage generated.

Of course there are people in the movement and outside the movement that won't take anything less than a happy ending but guess what, those people of course exist. But I wouldn't take Bob's statements to close to heart. He is after all himself a Massive Nintendo fan boy. Jumping to the gun to defend the misogyny in Other M for example, guilty of the same things he accuses others of. In this article I basically see Joss Whedon being Joss Whedon, trying to be clever to a fault. Using an incredibly blunt metaphor to hammer home a point about having to please your fans being a constant burden.

Typical.

"Bob doesn't agree with me, but you can write off Bob's opinion because Bob is a fanboy! FANBOY!! FAAAANNNNNBOOOOOYYYY!!!!!!"

Gogo Ad Hominem!

 

[1337mokro]

Actually you have the one "True ending" with Shepard gasping for breath, the indoctrination theory etc. Bioware might not have intentionally done so but they basically were handed a sequel theory by their fans. In each of the three endings the Normandy escapes. A ME4 doesn't have to be ABOUT Shepard.

But it does have to have an ending that makes it plausible to have a consistent game universe no matter how someone completed the previous game.

Unless you're going to totally invalidate the choice the player made at the end of ME3.

Which really would be taking away the player's choice, unlike the current situation where the player is handed choices they may not like, and a vocal portion of the fanbase seems compelled to complain about it.

The Re-take crowd has several people asking different things. So far as I've read is that the Official statement is an ending that "clarifies the events in the current ending and takes into account the choices made in the past two games". The vocal minority of the vocal majority are the ones clamouring for a Space Jesus happy ending.

I have to laugh at the "official statement" line. There is no hierarchy here, no top-down management that can actually release official statements. It's like Anonymous. You're in Anon if you claim to be Anon, and that's pretty much the way it works with the Re-Take crowd.

And, frankly, most of them that I've seen have been clamoring for Space Jesus. They wrap it up in talks about maintaining continuity of theme, or blather on about plot inconsistencies, and how a different ending might make more sense, but even the ones who vocally state that they're okay with Shepard dying still want an ending where nobody really loses anything.

Except Shepard.

The death of Shepard isn't really what the fans latch onto. What I heard most about and have the most problems with myself is the explosions of the Mass Relays, the stranding of the fleet, the weird logic of the AI, the fact some squad mates that were on the ground with you get teleported into the crashed Normandy, Joker deserting his post and making a run for it with the entire Normandy crew, the entire ending basically being a shot for shot remake of Toppen Tengen Gurren Lagan and so on. Right up until a certain point the ending makes sense. But then there is a huge gear change into nonsense. Right until you meet TIM the ending is basically going as it normally would, final climactic battle, huge space ship fight overhead, etc, but after that it feels like someone came into the studio. Slapped an ending together an shipped it.

The whole bit with Joker is actually one of the only complaints I have with the ending; I have no idea why he'd be heading out in the mass relay network, and I can't really think of a good justification for it.

The rest... The Catalyst's logic is a classic sci-fi trope (much like the rest of Mass Effect), the destruction of the relays is acceptable within the bounds of Clarke's Third Law as applied to Space Magic, and the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann ending is what they want, not what they got.

I mean that literally; functionally every Re-Take argument I've heard at some point incorporates the idea that the complainer in question feels that Shepard should have drop-kicked the Catalyst in the holographic nards and rejected the choice.

Which is pretty much what happens in TTGL.

It's not a matter of artistic choice were talking about here. It's a matter of lots and lots of unexplained plot holes that culminate into a broken ending. An artistic choice would have been to have Shepard Agree with the Reapers and let them assimilate the entire universe because that way Life itself will continue rather than fight and risk killing all life in the galaxy in a devastating war. Hoping that the AI will realize that life will always struggle to better itself and that one day the AI will meet a challenge beyond it's grasp.

There really aren't that many unexplained plot holes. And the ending you describe makes no sense in context; the Reapers don't destroy all organic life, just advanced life. The whole point of ME3 is an attempt to break that cycle.

You keep coming back to the fact that the final choices have nothing to do with the other choices in the game. Of course they don't. What are you trying to prove here? That two separate events with different choices are separated? Well yes. What do you want to prove with that that the event the game has been building up to will happen despite your choice in armour to wear. Well all right you proved that. Now what does that mean? That it was pointless to put any story deviations in the game that it would have been better as a linear rail road?

Because one of the major complaints of the Re-Take crowd is how the ending doesn't reflect their choices.

And the ending almost never reflects choices, really. Since everyone has be to be able to get to the ending, after all. You never want to set up a scenario where making the wrong "choice" an hour into the game means you can't win it, and you only find that out 30 hours later. People would storm your office with torches and pitchforks.

At most, what you can offer is a sort of post-ending epilogue where you see some of the consequences of your choices, as was done in ME2. But those choices still had no effect on the choice you are offered at the ending of ME2. You can give the base to Cerberus, or destroy it. Those are your options. Nothing else.

What they're really complaining about then, albeit somewhat ignorantly, is the lack of that resolving cutscene where we see what happened with the Krogan, etc. They made the choices; their ending is quite possibly vastly different from my ending, all that's missing is the final outcome of those choices, something that Bioware may well have had different plans for that have since been scrapped over the outrage generated.

Of course there are people in the movement and outside the movement that won't take anything less than a happy ending but guess what, those people of course exist. But I wouldn't take Bob's statements to close to heart. He is after all himself a Massive Nintendo fan boy. Jumping to the gun to defend the misogyny in Other M for example, guilty of the same things he accuses others of. In this article I basically see Joss Whedon being Joss Whedon, trying to be clever to a fault. Using an incredibly blunt metaphor to hammer home a point about having to please your fans being a constant burden.

Typical.

"Bob doesn't agree with me, but you can write off Bob's opinion because Bob is a fanboy! FANBOY!! FAAAANNNNNBOOOOOYYYY!!!!!!"

Gogo Ad Hominem!

You talk of choice when you spent the past 3 posts saying there is no choice. Weren't they just 3 illusions having the game end practically the same way. With just different colourings of the backgrounds. I find it hilarious you basically backpedal up the wall going on about invalidating the players choice at the end of ME3 when there was no choice except which flavour of cool aid your explosion is.

The point of the Re-take movement demanding that their choices in the final game are reflected in the ending is that in interviews they promised that. The fans are simply demanding that for once the box blurb and pre release horseshit actually matches the finished game. It's not such a big demand even. Fall Out New Vegas had a player specific ending. Of course the game still ends the same way, but the endings aren't the same.

I love how you basically take snippets of an argument, the only ones you can think up responses to, and just respond to that. What about the many links about interviews where the devs promissed endings that reflected your choices? Where the ending wouldn't be an ABC affair? You can't defend that and the only defence for that makes Bioware look like a bunch of massive lazy bums. I'm pretty tired of debating your one argument for why the re-take movement is wrong (But the previous games all ended in a single way to) it's not an argument when the pre-release press stated something different, other games have done it better and your entire ending rips of another game, deus ex.

Clap clap you know two words of latin.

Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat? I just say what I see. Bob will defend and has defended anything remotely nintendo. He's a huge hammer legion member. Has little to do with me. Has more to do he released a video defending a game where a man shoots a woman for not listening to his orders.

 

[Raesvelg]

You talk of choice when you spent the past 3 posts saying there is no choice. Weren't they just 3 illusions having the game end practically the same way. With just different colourings of the backgrounds. I find it hilarious you basically backpedal up the wall going on about invalidating the players choice at the end of ME3 when there was no choice except which flavour of cool aid your explosion is.

You apparently have some difficulties with reading comprehension. I can recommend various techniques for improving that deficiency, but let's just work with what we have for now...

I'll break it down for you, on the basis of Re-Take complaints and responses to them, to make it somewhat easier for you.
----------------------------------------
Complaint 1: The ending doesn't reflect the choices I make during the game! All that matters is the little war readiness gauge!

Response 1: Yes, the choices you make are not represented in the ending. The fact of the matter is that they hardly ever are, sadly. Choice in RPGs is inherently illusory; the programmers can't really take into account every possible permutation of an ending that might accurately reflect the choices you made, so they tend to make those choices seem significant without actually being significant. To use previous games in the series as an example, no matter what you do in the game in pursuit of your goals, at the end you typically have a very limited array of choices, none of which have anything to do with how you got there. Where the choices typically come into play is in the resolution of the story, but we'll get to that later.

Complaint 2: This isn't the ending I was promised! No ABC endings, they said!

Response 2: This is a bit trickier, but in effect we're looking at a matter of perspective here, more than anything else. Where does "the end" begin? Is ME3 "the end" of the series, taken as a whole, or is there some arbitrary point during the game where "the end" starts, and that's all that counts?

Technically what you're complaining about here is actually a matter of resolution, not choice. In order to get to the ending, you made a lot of choices. You saved the Krogan, or betrayed them. You saved/killed the Quarians/Geth, or made peace between them. And so on, and so forth. Lots of little things that yes, get reflected in your War Readiness gauge, but in actuality they'd make your "ending" very different from my "ending"... but for some reason, Bioware chose to leave that obligatory resolution cutscene out of the game, which is my major complaint about it.

Complaint 3: There's no resolution!

Response 3: Right there with you on that one. It's not a game-breaker for me, given how much I enjoyed the rest of the game, but it would have been nice.

Complaint 4: The endings are all the same except for the color of the explosion!

Response 4: Honestly, if you're too angry to see the different ramifications in the three different endings, there's really no point in continuing this. See also Response 2.
-----------------------------------------------
I'm really not sure how much simpler I can make this for you.

Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?

Clap, clap, you can quote Horace? Am I supposed to be impressed or something?

I just say what I see. Bob will defend and has defended anything remotely nintendo. He's a huge hammer legion member. Has little to do with me. Has more to do he released a video defending a game where a man shoots a woman for not listening to his orders.

None of which alters the fact that you're making an ad hominem attack on Bob rather than addressing the substance of the argument.

EDIT: And again, done with arguing about ME3's ending and the furor surrounding it. Henceforth sticking to discussion about the commentary Bob is implying resides in Cabin in the Woods, specifically the idea of arguably commercial artists chafing under the restrictions of the expectations of the genre's fans.

 

[1337mokro]

You talk of choice when you spent the past 3 posts saying there is no choice. Weren't they just 3 illusions having the game end practically the same way. With just different colourings of the backgrounds. I find it hilarious you basically backpedal up the wall going on about invalidating the players choice at the end of ME3 when there was no choice except which flavour of cool aid your explosion is.

You apparently have some difficulties with reading comprehension. I can recommend various techniques for improving that deficiency, but let's just work with what we have for now...

I'll break it down for you, on the basis of Re-Take complaints and responses to them, to make it somewhat easier for you.
----------------------------------------
Complaint 1: The ending doesn't reflect the choices I make during the game! All that matters is the little war readiness gauge!

Response 1: Yes, the choices you make are not represented in the ending. The fact of the matter is that they hardly ever are, sadly. Choice in RPGs is inherently illusory; the programmers can't really take into account every possible permutation of an ending that might accurately reflect the choices you made, so they tend to make those choices seem significant without actually being significant. To use previous games in the series as an example, no matter what you do in the game in pursuit of your goals, at the end you typically have a very limited array of choices, none of which have anything to do with how you got there. Where the choices typically come into play is in the resolution of the story, but we'll get to that later.

Complaint 2: This isn't the ending I was promised! No ABC endings, they said!

Response 2: This is a bit trickier, but in effect we're looking at a matter of perspective here, more than anything else. Where does "the end" begin? Is ME3 "the end" of the series, taken as a whole, or is there some arbitrary point during the game where "the end" starts, and that's all that counts?

Technically what you're complaining about here is actually a matter of resolution, not choice. In order to get to the ending, you made a lot of choices. You saved the Krogan, or betrayed them. You saved/killed the Quarians/Geth, or made peace between them. And so on, and so forth. Lots of little things that yes, get reflected in your War Readiness gauge, but in actuality they'd make your "ending" very different from my "ending"... but for some reason, Bioware chose to leave that obligatory resolution cutscene out of the game, which is my major complaint about it.

Complaint 3: There's no resolution!

Response 3: Right there with you on that one. It's not a game-breaker for me, given how much I enjoyed the rest of the game, but it would have been nice.

Complaint 4: The endings are all the same except for the color of the explosion!

Response 4: Honestly, if you're too angry to see the different ramifications in the three different endings, there's really no point in continuing this. See also Response 2.
-----------------------------------------------
I'm really not sure how much simpler I can make this for you.

Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?

Clap, clap, you can quote Horace? Am I supposed to be impressed or something?

I just say what I see. Bob will defend and has defended anything remotely nintendo. He's a huge hammer legion member. Has little to do with me. Has more to do he released a video defending a game where a man shoots a woman for not listening to his orders.

None of which alters the fact that you're making an ad hominem attack on Bob rather than addressing the substance of the argument.

EDIT: And again, done with arguing about ME3's ending and the furor surrounding it. Henceforth sticking to discussion about the commentary Bob is implying resides in Cabin in the Woods, specifically the idea of arguably commercial artists chafing under the restrictions of the expectations of the genre's fans.

MASS EFFECT BIT!

Statement 1: Because choice is inherently illusionary you should never expect choices made in other parts of the game to be featured in the final conclusion. Just like fans were wrong to point out the fact you had two radiation immune partners in Fallout 3. The choice of having them befriend you was illusionary which means the developers should never be criticised for overlooking such a massive plothole.

In effect your saying that if devs get lazy, write a sloppy ending that CONTRADICTS themselves and the games logic. We should let them because it's an art, that's being rushed out into stores for mass consumption.

Statement 2: If we just see the entire game as the ending to a series, we can talk away how the game itself ended because if we look at just the ending we come face to face with the reality that it was severely lacking.

This is basically subjective. Do you view the entire game as the ending or do you view it as a separate instalment in a series that should be in itself a contained experience. If someone picks up ME3 because he heard the other games were good, wanted to try one and plays it. What do you tell him? You're supposed to see the entire game as an ending? That person has no beginning nor middle then. He started at the end and got no real end out of the game.

Statement 3: I agree there is no resolution. In reality the endings open up more plotholes in the story and in fact contradict logic in the games world and basically shows the ending as a sloppy piece of work.

Statement 4: The endings have deep and varied ramifications.

Doesn't change that in each and every ending the relays are broken or inactive, the joint fleet is stranded miles away from home on a deserted world stuck with only FTL drives, Joker deserted so he could have the normandy crash lands with your inexplicably present squadmates on board, the god child AI still has a moronic circle logic loop going on, none of the war asset collection "really" mattered in the end besides getting a cliffhanger ending or not.

Whatever the ramifications the plot holes are the same. Sure having synthetic life merge with organic life (which is never explained how the hell that is supposed to work is everyone a fucking cyborg now?) has deep philosophical and introspective elements.....but none of it gets explored. The game ends and that's your ending. Meaning that the endings don't offer you anything different on a mental level.

You have good points. For you the game entertained and satisfied you.

However this is how I see it. I bought a game. A game that was going to conclude the series I enjoyed for the past 5 years and have certain features promised to me by the developers, even the box promised 16 different endings (So far I've only seen 6 actually different endings online), however I didn't get the game I was promised.

Should we then let them get away with it? Should we not demand a better product for our money? You know how much I make in a month? 890 euro. That's about enough to cover the rent for a run-down room, pay the electric bills, food for a month, save up enough money to buy a full price game every two-three months and pay yearly tuition fees that are getting exorbitant at best. I have a very expensive hobby in gaming which means I have to severely LIMIT the games I buy at full price. I enjoyed the previous games meaning I saved up to buy the third instalment at launch.

I come home. Enjoy the game which quite honestly has some of the greatest tear jerking moments in recent gaming history.... and then the game ends on a flat fart. I spent 50 euro on this game. This in my opinion is not passable. I paid top dollar for this. I demand more effort if you want me as a customer. The game was returned for a nice bit of cash back and to possibly hurt Bioware indirectly with a used sale.

To me and to many people it simply did not deliver what it promised. To me and many people the ending retroactively affected the way the entire game was perceived. Some of the dissatisfied people decided to start a group and campaign for a different ending.

My ire is then with the gaming media actively antagonizing that group.

Bob being one of those people. He himself being guilty of the same fandom and entitlement he accuses the Re-takers of. It is hypocrisy. I will attack him on that every time he makes such a statement about a group of fans when he himself will do the exact same thing for the thing he enjoys.

CABIN IN THE WOODS BLUNT METAPHOR BIT!

If commercial writers are chaffing under the yolk of consumer demands. Maybe they should leave their golden money palaces, penthouse apartments, 100'000 dollar studios and equipment, relinquish their 6 figure bank accounts and become Buddhist monks devoted to the making of art films.

If they are not willing to do that. Well guess what we live in a consumer market. If your going to begrudge your audience for expecting certain things from a genre they like then your doing it wrong. The only reason current day audiences expect a horror film to be stupid is because allot of horror films have been really really stupid.

Horror films have gone from Scary, to Gorefests. Failed writer after failed writer making characters as annoying as possible so the only solace the audience had was to see them die and like a pavlovian dog they became used to the stupid Gorefest horror flick. What happened then was that commercial artists saw money and decided to exploit the current taste of the audience by writing more stupid Gorefest horror flicks. SAW movie anyone?

To read about such a blatant insult to the fans of a genre, the fans that have patiently endured sloppy shitty writing in the hopes of seeing good movies, eventually falling in line and finding new joys in just watching the annoying people get killed, is nothing short of disgusting. The genre became what it became not because of the fans. It became what it was because artists let the bar drop. The audience followed. The artist now berates the audience for doing what it did.

If Joss didn't want horror movies to drop so far in quality that the audience now expects nothing but slob, maybe he should have taken it on himself and perhaps shot Eli Roth in his "O faced" head.

The funny thing being that Cabin in the Woods is a commercial success so basically his message is bullshit because the audiences jumped to see something different than the current trend. It has already made back it's budget and I predict it to do so a few more times over the next month.


PS: I always have difficulty understanding bullshit, that's why it's called bullshit.

Yes you should be impressed with my Latin. Satires wasn't an easy book to translate.

Vescere bracis meis Joss Whedon.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Sorry Bob, but you're just like all the other film critics out there. Making a good film out to be a great film.

I'd like to think it's subtle bias; the underlying message isn't aimed at the general audience, but the artists who create the movies.

And as MovieBob has demonstrated, he has no small amount of contempt for the mainstream audience; anything offering symbolic catharsis is bound to tickle his fancy.

But this is special; he gets to use it as a two-pronged attack against mainstream audiences.
Once for films in general, and again against the Retake ME3 people.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

And the Mass Effect connection (which, btw, is bordering a bit on obsession. Seriously when you can't even enjoy a perfectly good, unique and interesting horror movie without seeing it as fuel for your ME3 crusade maybe it's time to reconsider things... Just a thought

Might want to tell that to the rest of this website. It's been over a month and it STILL keeps flooding the front page of the forums.

 

[mikerdna]

I had a different take and an alternative ending.

I think the employees were totally believable in their belief that they were keeping evil forces chained up by doing evil things to placate them, all for the greater good of the world.

However, this assume that "the man upstairs" on the red phone, presumably God, permits and is involved in these experiments, in order to keep his arch-rival in submission for the greater benefit of humanity. Plausible, if you accept a less than perfect God, and many do. You can have a good/evil polarity with ; or a order/chaos polarity with character flaws.

ALTERNATIVE ENDING:

HOWEVER, I had hoped that rather than the (presumably evil) elder gods in the bottom of the pit, I had been hoping that all the GOOD gods (greek, roman, American indian, Jesus, Ahura Mazda, you name it) were actually in the pit, and some trickster/and/or/god of chaos (not evil) was in charge (i.e. "man upstairs") and using the ritual sacrifices of the Cabin to taint the good gods, de-power them, and elsewhere to retain supremacy over the world by locking up his competition.

The employees would be well-meaning dupes, tricked into keeping the good guys locked up, and only by a perfect performance of mankind (remember all those failed experiments?) could the good gods be released, which is what was happening (like hitting the lottery, so surprised was everyone). As the experiments failed due to the better half of humanity overcoming evil, the rumblings increased, the good gods were awakening and breaking out of their chains. Finally, the good girl didn't kill the funny guy to save herself. In the alternative last scene, a flood of angels, gods in toga, Thor with his hammer, etc come out and thank the two survivors and kick some evil/chaos bad-ass and bring a new era of peace and magic to the world.

What do you think?

 

[mikerdna]

Well, I'm glad people at least talking about ME3 so much. Could we get back to the movie?

 

[Dr.Nick]

Oh look Movie Bob harassing the Retake Mass Effect movement again. Surprise surprise.

 

[Raesvelg]

It doesn't really deserve to be called a "movement", let's be honest here. It's a video game. It's not people trying to cure cancer, or depose a dictator, or anything that actually matters.

It's people complaining that they didn't like the last five minutes of a video game.

 

[JoelChenFA]

what he did to the Aliens franchise should earn him a spot in one of the Inner Circles of Hell

Really do some research on these things before making such ridiculous claims. Whedon didn't do anything to the Aliens franchise, that was all the studios and the director.

Know what you're talking about before posting on the web. And, while you're at it, recognize that you're not a telepath and, as such, can't actually read the mind of someone whose post you've read. If you were less presumptuous and self-indulgent in these matters before posting, you'd recognize that just because the director "ruined" Whedon's "vision" doesn't mean that Whedon's take on the movie was any good. Here's a hint: it wasn't. His script was shit. The director "ruined" what began as an awful piece of crap, giving Whedon plausable deniability. If he'd have made Whedon happy, the film would still be shit.

By your criteria no movies that are a statement about life for the lower classes can exist because the people making t have money so should shut the fuck up, regardless of what they went through to get there.

How the hell is Cabin In the Woods "a statement about life for the lower classes"? And while we're at it, how am I telling moviemakers not to make that?

You've just started making things up.

Cabin In the Woods implicitly says "We, the movie makers, are sick of making bad media for terrible audiences."

Bob repeats that implication, declaring it nearly explicit.

I accept Bob's premise and point out a serious flaw -- that the movie-makers don't have a damn thing worth complaining about.

You claim that I said that movie makers therefore can't make "a statement about life for the lower classes" -- something I didn't say. Ever. Didn't even come close to that. The movie makers weren't even talking about the lower classes, they were talking about a narrow group of rich people, namely themselves. They were saying that they have to make schlock and blaming the audience of schlock for said schlock -- an audience that isn't entirely "lower class" and doesn't even come close to including all of the "lower classes," no matter how you're defining them.

What the hell are you going on about?

I'm not talking about making money. I'm talking about getting to make the art and tell the stories that you want to, which is where he constantly gets screwed.

Bullshit. He only gets screwed when he tries to make a movie or show AND, simultaneously, tries to make unseemly amounts of money at it. Careful now, you've misstated my point entirely and forgotten the only relevant bit. You aren't talking about money, but I am, and just because you'd like to forget it doesn't mean you can put words in my mouth. Money IS the point. He doesn't get complete creative control when the studios are paying him because it's the studios' film. Is that fair? Well, back up: is it fair that he's a gajillionaire? Fuck no. And that injustice is so gross, so overwhelmingly horrible, that his little pity party doesn't mean shit in comparison.

And, once again, he can make all the art he wants, he can even make money at it (something his not-famous peers can't even always do, even if they pay their dues and deserve to!), he just can't rake in millions.

So he's being a little *****.

The Geek God that wanted more? Maybe the Giant Hand at the end was his?