Sorry, Mass Effect 3 complainers

[Legion]

But what if one did play through the game, and still held that opinion?

Depends.

Do they think everybody who hated the ending is childish/entitled? Or only those who outright demand that their dislikes are addressed/changed?

If it's the former then they are not worth listening to, if they are the latter then I can agree with that, as somebody who doesn't like the ending. There are an awful lot of childish people both sides of the fence.

 

[boag]

Let me get this straight, you were complaining about complainers without having actually seen the freaking ending?

Yes. One does not necessarily require the other. I found it surprising that people were acting in such extreme ways as announcing BioWare boycotts, demanding different endings, and spewing vitriol across every message board they could because they didn't like the ending of a game.

Having now played the ending, I have a better understanding of why everyone is so upset. That doesn't mean I approve of the idiotic behaviour some people engaged in, just that I'm more aware of what drove them to it.

Well excuse me for rubbing your nose in the dirt now.

You Whiny entitled homophobic brat, the ending is perfect and you cannot questions Biowares Glorious Artistic Integrity

Oh look, an inability to discuss things in an adult fashion. Shocking. No, I'm not going to excuse you for acting like an ass, sorry. And homophobic? Where on earth did you pull that little gem from?

Im not sure if you missed then entire fallout of the event, but at first some people were just dumbfounded by it all.

The shit escalated heavily and speedily into trainwreck status when Bioware and huuuuge number of people including most major game review sites started condeming and dismissing anyone disappointed with the ending as whiny entitled brats.

The last slur is an ironic statement, since that was what anyone with a dissenting opinion on the ending was called by Bioware and reviewers, for not appreciating the Artistic Integrity of Bioware.

Homophobic was added when EA got named worst company in the US, a few hours after receiving the award, they made official statements about how they were getting flooded with letters from anti gay lesbian groups, trying to spin the whole thing as if all dissatisfied customers were just Homophobic people.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

Yes I was EXACTLY like you. Well actually just mostly. I decided before playing the game "how bad could it really be? I'm sure it isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I'll decide for myself" and boy did I, WHAT THE FUCK BIOWARE? WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THOSE IDEAS YOU HAD TOLD US ABOUT FOR THE ENDING? Bioware actually talked about multiple video game endings being too similar to each other and that they wanted to make an ending where every choice you made during the series would have an impact on the ending, no two people's endings would be the same and there would of course be an ending where the reapers simply destroy us all or one where shepard wins and a bunch of other endings that played differently depending on your choices. They said the different endings WOULDN'T come down to what color you chose so WHY THE FUCK DID THEY DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY SAID? I read somewhere that all the writers usually get together and decide TOGETHER how a big piece of story plays out but this time Casey Hudson locked just about ALL of them out of the loop and quickly made his own ending. I read somewhere that the other writers had a completely different idea of how it should have played out but instead we get this.

Casey Hudson, if you are reading this. Fuck you.

 

[Dandark]

This is why it would be great if people didn't whine about those who disliked the ending being "Entitled" or "Childish" until they actully played through it or at least watched it on youtube or something.

But what if one did play through the game, and still held that opinion?

OT: I imagine it'll kick off again when this new ending DLC comes out, so don't get too lovey-dovey just yet. I'll be preparing the bunker...

If they played through the game or looked it up on youtube to see what all the fuss is about then that would just be there opinion, it would be fine. It's just annoying that people did that without even seeing what was complained about, if they did see it and still think that those complaining are entitled or whatever then that's fine but at least watch it first you know?

 

[Legion]

But what if one did play through the game, and still held that opinion?

Depends.

Do they think everybody who hated the ending is childish/entitled? Or only those who outright demand that their dislikes are addressed/changed?

If it's the former then they are not worth listening to, if they are the latter then I can agree with that, as somebody who doesn't like the ending. There are an awful lot of childish people both sides of the fence.

In the end it is how they want to go about it.

I dont like fighting games, that doesn't mean I get to choose how they should be made.
Same should apply to this ending.

True enough. One thing to remember though, would be that game developers need to stop making promises that they cannot or choose not to keep.

If Bioware had not made all these outlandish claims, then 90% of the arguments against the ending could be brushed away with "This is how they wanted it, get over it". Sadly Bioware still have not learnt to keep their mouths shut and had to tell everybody all these amazing different things the ending would include, which in the end, it didn't.

Personally I like Valves policy with Half Life, yes it's frustrating that they never give us any real information, but on the other hand, they aren't promising anything that will lead to fans having elevated expectations.

 

[Callate]

I agree that at this point there's probably nothing much to be done with regard to Mass Effect. Even if Bioware caved completely and wrote an entirely new ending, not only would there be a different set of people complaining with equal vehemence about how they'd betrayed art and set a precedent that would set the medium back and (yatta yatta), but a) the "old ending" would still be in players' minds and b) the new ending would probably still fail to satisfy at least a significant portion of those who hated the old one.

That said, I don't think the uproar was without merit, and it may have some good effects in the long term.

Certain people love to talk about "the artist" as if they were an entity of independent grandeur, creating greatness out of whole cloth without any sort of obligation or relation to the tawdry commercial realm or the plebeian desires of their audience. But that's only true of creations that remain in the artist's closet and are never seen by anyone else. The moment someone lets their work have an audience, at the very least it's subject to interpretations other than those the creator intended.

The ending of ME3, from most accounts, smacks of a belief that the creators' only obligation was to create something that they appreciated, and I think that's incredibly wrongheaded. A single work, perhaps, can be whatever the artist wants; after all, they're presenting it in isolation, and the audience has the ability to take or leave it. And I'll grant that it's true, frequently, that a creator who tries only to create "what the audience wants" is likely to end up both burning themselves out and failing in that goal.

But when you create a commercially successful series, we need to stop pretending that its nature remains exactly the same as that single portrait on the wall or that single book on the shelf. A series owes its existence to the commercial success of its preceding chapters, and the expectations of those who allowed it to come into being deserve to be taken into account. Bioware encouraged that community that had made the series a success to take a sense of ownership in the game, right down to the whole "FemShep" question bouncing around on Facebook before the game's release. In light of that, the ending presented was a slap in the face.

I don't think the audience deserved that. I don't think the creators were in the right to feel that they could "get away" with that without repercussions. And I genuinely hope that in the future creators will recognize that satisfying their audience is not a demeaning requirement, but part of the partnership they agreed to when that audience agreed to come with them on an extended journey.

 

[Mikeyfell]

ME 3 thread= Yet another morning shot.

Sorry, you lost me. What's a morning shot?

Oh, I take a shot every time I see a new thread about Mass Effect 3 (Or specifically about the end) I was going to start with Skyrim, but then ME 3 came out and nobody talks about Skyrim anymore, so shifted my Escapist Forums Drinking Game over to threads about the Mass Effect End.

Sorry for lack of context.

I'm afraid for the fix too mostly because I'm not convinced that it couldn't get worse from here.

What I've read about the "fix" is that it's just an expansion/clarification of the ending we've had already. I don't understand how that's meant to be a good thing; we're just going to be given more detail about something that already sucks. They're not changing anything, just telling us why we ought to appreciate what we've got.

Yes, it very easily could get even worse than it is right now.
at least at this point we have plausible deniability that the Indoctrination Theory might really be true.
If they crush that hope I don't even want to know about the "Extended Cut DLC"

Expansion and clarification sounds like they're giving the hologram kid more lines which is most of the problem right there. Without the Indoctrination Theory they would have to explain what the kid is there for, what exactly the Crucible is and who made it, and what for. and ...

[spoiler-You know what. Just watch this]
[/spoiler]

Well there's a lot of stuff that the Extended Cut has to answer for.

I did hear that Kaiden, Hacket and EDI were recording more dialog, so that makes me... Um, skeptical. Which is as close to hopeful as I'm willing to get.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Oh, I take a shot every time I see a new thread about Mass Effect 3 (Or specifically about the end) I was going to start with Skyrim, but then ME 3 came out and nobody talks about Skyrim anymore, so shifted my Escapist Forums Drinking Game over to threads about the Mass Effect End.

Morning drinking games? Hardcore. Although basing a take-a-shot game off things that make geeks angry will probably leave you with some serious liver function issues...

I did hear that Kaiden, Hacket and EDI were recording more dialog, so that makes me... Um, skeptical. Which is as close to hopeful as I'm willing to get.

Kaiden died on Virmire. True fact.

As for the DLC, going by the fact they've got those voice actors back in the studio, I imagine it'll be more about picking up right after the ending. You know, explaining what happens to all the poor bastards who got stranded light-years from home without any food they were capable of eating and on the same ships as long-standing enemy races with whom they've just made an extremely tentative peace pact.

Basically, if there were any degree of logic behind it, the Extended Cut would just be a huge battle between the different races over who gets control of Earth's resources

 

[SonicWaffle]

The reliance on day one sales is what is hurting the industry the most, because it is dependent on hype.

Aren't day-one sales the ones that they really need, though? After the first few weeks there will be trade-in copies, and smart consumers will stop buying new copies of the game. If there isn't an aggressive push in those first few weeks to sell as many units as possible, the company probably loses out on a lot of cash.

"If you read a book set in Japan do you imagine the main character as Japanese unless specifically stated otherwise?"

Chances are .... yes. Books specifically have the point of having us identify ourselves with specific chars and when we read about features that we then apply to a framework that we already know.

That's not really what I meant, so let me re-phrase. Let's say you are an English person, because for all I know, you are. You read a book about a man, born and raised in Japan, having adventures. In Japan. When you picture the character, do you picture him as a Japanese man, or do you run it through the framework of your own experience and picture him as a caucasian man?

I think Asian kids reading Harry Potter, being aware that Harry is English, would imagine him that way rather than picture him as an Asian kid.

All the information you arn't specifically told. Where did that come from? It came from you. Your own experiences will fill the gaps. Your interpretation.

The reason I picked Harry Potter and a Chinese kid was because it is the kind of book where the reader is supposed to identify with the protagonist so the likelyhood off a child imagining that Harry Potter is a lot like him is pretty big.

Ah. I think I see the issue here. Do you mean they imagine him behaving in ways they are more used to, and conforming to their social norms whenever not expressly stated otherwise? Because I took what you said to mean physically, ie that Asian kids would picture Harry Potter looking Chinese or Pakistani or whatever.

EDIT:
Relation to the topic. The whole thing is to demonstrate how games are not that different from other pieces of art when it comes to audience participation. The only real difference is that Games will deny you access if you are not "good" enough. Again a power that is set only with the artist.

I dunno, I think games require a lot more active audience participation than most other forms of art. Those tend to be passive - movies, books, paintings etc just sit there, whether or not you're directly interacting with them. Whereas a game, if you're not interacting with it, just...stops.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

I would like to go into this for a bit, so the following text is ONE GREAT BIG MASSIVE SPOILER!!!!!!

I left your spoilertags in place for my responses, to be nice. Because I'm like that.

Spoiler

The Blue option gives you control over the Reapers, but you die, so you are vaporised. So basically you play right into the Harbinger's hands by doing this.

Spoiler

Although if Shepard were being indoctrinated, why would that offer even be on the table? Why is Harbinger volunteering to destroy his race's autonomy just to get rid of Shepard, a man who is quite literally on the verge of death? Better to just wait, or even better, kill him while he's totally at your mercy rather than giving him a series of options to pick from, two of which have negative ramifications for the Reapers.

Spoiler

The Green option fuses biology with synthetics and again, you let the Reapers win. Not only do they life, but now everything is part Reaper. Everyone will be indoctrinated.

Spoiler

Thing is, if that was what the Reapers wanted and they had the power to do it all along, why bother with any other option? What's the point in spending countless cycles all-but-eradicating organic life when they had the option to fuse organic and synthetic into one happy family?

Spoiler

The Red option destroys all synthetic life, arguably also the Geth, but this (to me) is the only real "let's save all life" option. The Reapers are destroyed, all other life remains and thusly you are freed from indoctrination and (assuming you did everything perfectly), you get the shot of Sheppard's body down on Earth, gasping for air.

Spoiler

Again, though, assuming that Shepard was indoctrinated, why would the Reapers put him in this situation?! What possible reason could they have for putting him in a situation where he can, if he wants to, blow them all up? I can't see any way for them to gain from this, and if they're controlling his mind and influencing what he does, it's downright moronic of them to say "here's a magic button to kill us, your hated enemies"

I like the indoctrination theory, it's had plenty of thought put into it, but rather than fixing the ending it actually just raises more questions. Specifically, if this is true, then how did the Reapers survive so long despite being functionally retarded?

If I may try to answer those based upon what I've read from BSN so far:

Spoiler

Essentially, the Reapers (or Harbinger) in the form of the child that represents what humanity Shepard couldn't save from the Reapers are attempting to manipulate a partially indoctrinated Shepard into becoming a full on Saren number-two, and completely break the Alliance's morale Shepard spent the entire game building up until that point. However, to do so, the Reapers need to make that "final choice" as convincing and authentic as possible in order to keep Shepard from eventually taking note of any Reaper-influenced patterns within the illusion, which is why they give you the options of Control and Synthesis alongside Destroy.

If Shepard does choose either of these options, it symbolizes Shepard finally giving into the Reapers endgame, and handing over the galaxy to full Reaper contol/actualization. This is supported by the speculation from the cutscene's where it appears that when Shepard is jumping into the beam or grabbing the.. electrocuted rods in either control or Synthesis, his/her body starts to deteriorate into almost a husk-like appearance before he/she finally vanishes, Saren/TIM-esque eyes and all. Also, if you notice the Starchild in the background, he simply stands as watches in almost a victorious manner as you are choosing these endings. However, if you choose Desstroy, the Starchild vanishes as you are shooting a.. pipe, that you know.. somehow blows up the Reapers and "apparently" EDI and the Geth (not convinced).

If you choose the Control or Synthesis option, IT speculates that Shepard/the player sees the same results as if the endings were literal, but rather than those endings actually happening, Shepard/the player is simply seeing an illusion of the scenario the Starchild just explained would happen if he/she picked them. Though you wouldn't "lose", specifically, Shepard would just have to try to fight against (more or less) full indoctrination in this scenario when confronted by Alliance forces in order to "win" the fight that the Destroy Shepard would awaken to without indoctrination. However, if you choose Destroy, it symbolizes Shepard winning the fight against the Reapers over his/her partially indoctrinated mind, and "waking up" from the illusion, which IT speculates starts right after Harbinger fries you with his laser.

Not that I completely agree with the IT, persay, but it would be pretty damned interesting of an ending if it was true. However, that would also mean that Bioware also had us pay for an unfinished game and ending, which just stinks either way. Also, it means Casey Hudson and Mac Walters did not intend the endings literally, which does not seem to be the case either. Unfortunately.

..Goddamnit. :/

 

[SonicWaffle]

Im not sure if you missed then entire fallout of the event, but at first some people were just dumbfounded by it all.

The shit escalated heavily and speedily into trainwreck status when Bioware and huuuuge number of people including most major game review sites started condeming and dismissing anyone disappointed with the ending as whiny entitled brats.

The way I saw it was not that anyone disappointed with the ending was being a "whiny brat", but those who were actively harassing BioWare to make changes were indeed being childish. My point was that, now that I've played through the game and seen the ending, I can understand why people were so pissed off, although I still don't support a lot of the behaviour I've seen from gamers over the issue.

The last slur is an ironic statement, since that was what anyone with a dissenting opinion on the ending was called by Bioware and reviewers, for not appreciating the Artistic Integrity of Bioware.

Homophobic was added when EA got named worst company in the US, a few hours after receiving the award, they made official statements about how they were getting flooded with letters from anti gay lesbian groups, trying to spin the whole thing as if all dissatisfied customers were just Homophobic people.

Ah. That could have been clearer - it seemed as though you were straight-up insulting me.

 

[rob_simple]

Actually, I'm still of the opinion that some - some! - of the complainers are being childish and acting like brats. I've seen forum posts screaming about how they deserve more than this, how BioWare are "stupid fags who hate their customers", how they will never ever buy a BioWare game again because this one was worse than the Holocaust, etc. It's hard to argue that behaviour like that isn't the work of entitled children.

This is still pretty much my feeling on the subject, and I never even finished ME2. I wouldn't speculate on the quality of the ending until I had played it, but it was the way many people were saying 'we were promised this, we were promised that, we deserve it' that really rubbed me up the wrong way. As I said at the time, there isn't a single game dev in history who hasn't promised more than they delivered (my personal favourite being the claims that Black was going to revolutionise the FPS genre and ended up being boring as shit) so I didn't understand why people were so pissed at ME3.

It's like as soon as I heard Resident Evil 5 was going to be co-op I knew I wasn't going to buy it, even though RE4 is one of my favourite games of all time. I played the demo of RE5 and it was horseshit and I was proved right in my decision; if I'd been anticipating ME3 I'd have waited, read the reviews and subsequent furore, maybe rented or borrowed it so I could see for myself, then got on with my life. I honestly don't understand the attachment people have to video games, they're not that important; that's what makes it seem childish to me.

Oh, and in regards to the why, someone did tell me that apparently a member of the dev team went ahead with an ending without running it by the writers first but I don't know how much truth there is in that.

 

[Tono Makt]

Sorry guys. I really am. I may have said some things about you that were not entirely fair. Forgive me, for I knew not what I did.

The whole controversy has been going on for a while now, regarding whether fans have any right to demand that a game (or any other work of art) ending be changed simply because they didn't like it. I don't think I agree with that. I was firmly on the side of the naysayers, believing that such a thing was just a bit childish, equivalent to stamping your feet because you didn't get what you wanted.

Last night (yes, I know I'm late to the party. I have other things to do, like...er...stuff) I finished Mass Effect 3. My views on the subject suddenly became a lot more clouded. It's a lot harder to retain the moral high ground now that I've actually seen what everyone was complaining about (before playing the game I had ardently avoided every spoiler that came my way, and so had no idea what the basis of the contention was) and come to the conclusion that the ending was really, truly, genuinely terrible. The people who want to "take back Mass Effect" have a lot of good points. Then again, so do the people opposing them. I've been thinking about which side of the the fence I fall, and I think I've made up my mind.

Better late than never. Now if we could just get the industry folk to play through the parts of games we don't like instead of dismissing our anger as irrelevant... I know, I know, I should just wish for a Unicorn Pony and have done with it. Got about the same possibility.

There are still people campaigning for a "fix". I don't want that. Changing the ending won't erase what we all played through, and whatever happens we'll still remember it and know that the rushed, crappy, illogical ending was what we were meant to see. I'm done with the game, and my (previously very high) respect for BioWare has taken a big knock. I just want to know why we were given the ending we were. ME3 was a solid game almost all the way through. The gameplay was great, tense and challenging. The story was suitably epic, and I've never been more emotionally invested in a video game. What caused it all to fall apart at the end, as if the development team just couldn't be bothered anymore? Everything we were told, all the cheap gimmicks we were assured wouldn't happen, we had to sit through. Was it for some planned super-DLC that EA wanted? Did the writers lose interest? Was there someone, somewhere, who actually thought that epic-sized plot holes and fundamental lack of choice was being true to the spirit of Mass Effect?

The whole thing, unlike some, hasn't made me furious or butthurt or turned me into a lifelong BioWare-phobe. I'm just sad, and I want to know why we were let down like this. Am I the only one who doesn't want BioWare to "fix" the ending, because it's already too late for that?

EDIT: captcha - "perfect world". What the hell is with the ironic captchas lately? :-/

We will never get an accurate answer to the question "Why did we get that ending?" for the same reason that we will never get a different, new ending - there is too much at stake. Maybe if Bioware goes out of business and the people who worked on ME3 have left the industry, we might get a decent answer. But as long as the people who made ME3 rely on this industry for their livelihood, they can't afford to give us the truth.

Those on the inside of the industry - game creators - have to keep their reputations as clean as possible. The producers need to keep their reputation as being able to guide a game from conception to completion smoothly and with the least amount of internal troubles. So if the producers of ME3 were to come out and say "We screwed the poochie on this one." that tarnishes their reputation. If they continue to say "We made an excellent game, but it was too high-minded for the average fan to understand." it gnaws at our guts, but when it comes right down to it how many people - without Googling it - can name who the producers of ME3 were? Who were the ones who said "This is the one we're keeping." to that shiatastic ending? Casey Hudson and... well, it's a multi-million dollar game. One single guy isn't going to have that sort of control over it. But I'll be damned if I could name even one other Bioware/EA person involved in the game off the top of my head. So all Casey Hudson has to do for the next game or two is to take a pen-name, or go by his middle name, or do something to make sure that "Casey Hudson" isn't in the credits of a game for a little while, and this blows over for him... if he sticks to his story that the game ending was great and the fans just didn't get it.

The writers on ME3 need to keep quiet about what really happened to the ending because they are easily replaceable, and unlike wizards they don't taste very appealing dipped in ketchup. One writer apparently came out and said it was just Casey Hudson writing the ending, and that article has been denied in a dozen ways since it came out. Why? Because that writer needs to be hired again, and few, if any, producers will hire a writer who spills all the backroom secrets of the game development. "Well, Writer A wanted to add a female Krogan named "Kang", and since we had never seen a Krogan before he had his anime-loving artist friend design this really kawaii shark-girl with huge tits! Which is what he always brings to a new female character, they're all like 15 years old with GG sized gazoongas." is hilarious for us to read here on the Escapist, but is rather bad for Writer A to read, and for Producer A (who hired Writer A for this project), both of whom will have a tarnished reputation for it. So writers aren't going to say much about this situation in the near future.

And finally those who depend on the game industry for their livelihood won't want a new ending to be made either, as it invalidates their own writings on the subject. "9.5, Game Of The Year!" in March followed by "Due to Fan Outcry, the ending of the game has been Totally Rewritten!" in April, and readers go "Well if the ending was so terrible... how the hell did you give it a 9.5 AND call it Game of the Year?". A rather huge blow to the reputation of the reviewer, and to anyone who was paid (in one way or another) to write comments on the game but didn't mention or glossed over the ending that was so terrible that the game creator made a new one. It comes across either as being an industry stooge ("I knew the ending was garbage but I gave it a high score anyway because I need to keep the game creators on my side.") or that your opinion is now suspect. ("I loved the ending, what are you talking about?")


Regarding a "fix" to the ending, I'm waffling on that now. I used to want a new ending that tossed out the old one entirely, but now I'm more wanting for some things to be more useful. I get a 3700EMS (no multiplayer for me; I've gone on X-Box live a few times over the years and each time I come back more convinced that Microsoft is keeping it around so that they have a huge pool of test subjects for the "Electrocute Moron" feature that they will someday release. It's illegal to test deadly things on human beings, but we're talking about X-Box live users - history will eventually side with Microsoft on that.), I get the Geth, Quarians, Rachni, Krogan, Batarians, hell everyone is now coming with me. I don't care about seeing new units - I want to see 10,000 Krogan charging across the ruins of Hyde Park. I want to see 100 Asari Commando's using Slam all at once against charge of Husks. I want to see those same Commando's making a whole line of Singularities against a charge of husks and then see a line of Turians pick them off in the air with sniper rifles. I want to see a Brute attacking a group of Marines and then suddenly blow up, only to have a Salarian take off a cloaking device while holding onto a mine. I want to see a Geth ship sacrafise itself to save a Quarian Liveship. Etc.

And I want to see that charge of husks appear to be unstoppable if I don't have the Krogan on my side. If I don't find the Banner of the First Legion (or whatever it is), I don't want to see those Turian Snipers. If I don't get the Geth to fight along side the Quarians, I want to see that Liveship be destroyed. If I don't have a high enough EMS, I want to see the Normandy destroyed, sacrificing itself to ensure that the Crucible can get into place.

In short? I want to SEE what my EMS score means. I want to SEE what all my efforts bring to the end-game. And I want there to be real, visual, obvious consequences for my choices. I didn't get enough ships (Geth didn't come, Quarians didn't come, Salarians didn't come, Asari didn't come, didn't get all of the Warships) so the Normandy dies, or someone else that I've grown to care about dies to ensure that the Crucible gets into place. I don't get enough ground support so the final scenes in London are tough-to-nigh-impossible because the Reapers can throw more at me. (that 10,000 Krogan charge is something the Reapers can't ignore, after all.) I want to see that what I've done in the game to this point truly matters in the end game. Lastly, I don't want to see the Normandy fleeing the battle.

Give me that, and I'll accept the annoying Starchild, and the leaps of logic that it requires.

 

[Tono Makt]

If you read a book set in Japan do you imagine the main character as Japanese unless specifically stated otherwise?

That depends on whether or not I like the main character. If I like the main character, I tend to think of them as Ruri Hoshino. If I dislike the main character, I tend to think of them as Shinji Ikari. If I'm not sure if I like them or not, I tend to think of them as The Dude.

/end threadjack
//if anyone decides to hack my computer, I really don't recommend looking in that "Thai LB" folder that comes preinstalled on all Windows 7 Professional Home editions.

 

[Lugbzurg]

Stop calling it art. STOP. Its a video game. More importantly, its a product that they're selling. Who the hell cares about artistic integrity? I, as a savy consumer, only care about one thing. MY MONEY and what is important enough to spend it on. If something isn't to my liking, then I'm not buying it. That doesn't mean that things should change for me to buy them, it just means that not everyone is going to appreciate and like the product.

Game doesn't meet my standards so I'm not going to buy it. Why is that anyone elses problem? if you like the game well fine, like it. You already bought it, so Bioware and EA don't give 2 shits about your opinion.

"Games are not art"?

Erm. Ok. Better remove all films, novels, songs, paintings, sculptures, and all other forms of creative expressions from "art", and see what we're left with.

What I'm saying is its not an excuse. I didn't like the ending, and them going "oooooh but its art" doesn't mean anything. Since I don't like it AND its art then all negativity and criticism is invalid? It's an excuse that is going to become more and more popular as video gaming grows. Doesn't mean they should change anything, its just an "artistic" decision in the series that everyone hated.

Wow... So messed up. Something being art doesn't automatically mean you should love it. I never said it excuses anything. Don't make up words I never said.

A child's scribbling and the endings to Mass Effect 3 are both art. They're not good, but, they're still art. A single line on a piece of paper is art. But, no one can tell you weather or not you should enjoy it.

Mass Effect 3, like all videogames (even Big Rigs, for crying out loud), is art. That doesn't mean everything about it is perfect.
Stop putting words in my mouth.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Morning drinking games? Hardcore. Although basing a take-a-shot game off things that make geeks angry will probably leave you with some serious liver function issues...

I only drink for every thread, not every post.
And only every one I see, (and post in, which is every one I see)
And I don't only check the Forums in the morning.

My liver'll be fine.

I did hear that Kaiden, Hacket and EDI were recording more dialog, so that makes me... Um, skeptical. Which is as close to hopeful as I'm willing to get.

Kaiden died on Virmire. True fact.

As for the DLC, going by the fact they've got those voice actors back in the studio, I imagine it'll be more about picking up right after the ending. You know, explaining what happens to all the poor bastards who got stranded light-years from home without any food they were capable of eating and on the same ships as long-standing enemy races with whom they've just made an extremely tentative peace pact.

Basically, if there were any degree of logic behind it, the Extended Cut would just be a huge battle between the different races over who gets control of Earth's resources

I know right, over the course of the Anderson/Illusive Man talk Joker broke off from the battle with the Reapers, picked up your squad who just saw you get blasted by a Harbinger and then booked it out of the system and got far enough away to crash land on a green planet.

I think the Normandy crashed on the Island from Lost.
There's the Indoctrination Theory, but the second best ending alternative is the Lost Island Theory. Because that theory even fixes some of the plotholes that aren't related to the end of the game. and some plotholes in Lost.
That's just what I think anyway.

 

[Risingblade]

Bioware already made it up to me by letting me play as a geth in multi player.