The Big Picture: Mutants and Masses

Raijha

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Honestly, at this point, I have to agree with a number of people. I may stand a bit in the middle ground here, I absolutely disliked the way the ending was done. It felt rushed, there were plot holes EVERYWHERE and it was just in general terrible quality. But I was also able to take something from it, see where the closure was in the game, and accept that it was at least an ending, if a terrible one. I don't think it should be changed, I certainly don't think that because I paid for the game and it was advertised a certain way, (which by the way, I actually do believe that all your decisions made sense and had an effect. Just through the whole game instead of in the last 5 minutes. I personally agree with PA when they say the entire 3rd game was the END of the series, and just because you didn't get a direct effect on the 2 minute cut-scene or 5 minutes of dialogue at the very end, doesn't mean your choices in the first 2 games had no effect at all.) Point is, I certainly don't feel that I DESERVE a new ending, or that BioWare has any responsibility to make me one.

So yes, the FTC complaint, and the retake Mass Effect, a little crazy, definitely going too far.

On the other hand, this constant insulting, belittling and claiming that the gaming community, specifically Mass Effect "fanboys" from so many people in the media now is just going too far in the other extreme as well. We have every goddamn right to complain about a haphazard, last minute, disconnected terrible ending, and I don't care what anyone says, we will ALWAYS have that right without needing to be called whiny, entitled, or any of the other BS terms that have been thrown around by so many people.

Standing from where I am in the middle here, I'm honestly just insulted, and disgusted, by both sides at this point. I just want to move on, accept that the ending was terrible, but that it was their decision, and that they know that we think it was terrible, and leave it at that. Who's with me?
 

Frank_Sinatra_

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TorchofThanatos said:
Frank_Sinatra_ said:
Bad move Bob, very, very, very, very bad move.

It's apparent that you really haven't researched into the whole Mass Effect 3 debacle, so be prepared to hear that the Mass Effect series is a special case, BioWare didn't deliver on ANY of their promises, and they pretty much slapped their own IP in the face in the last 5 minutes of their game.

Remember: BioWare has stated that their fans are equal creators in the story along with their actual writing staff.
MovieBob has it right, you are wrong!
In fact all the crying fans are wrong!
Yes, I own and played through all the ME. ME3 ending was not the greatest but it in not that bad! There is a difference between not liking the ending and it being a bad ending. The story was wrapped up and playable. It didn't end in a way you liked it! SO GET OVER IT!
Also it would be impossible to get an ending that the crazy fans wanted. The game still has one set story. One story line that you follow. It would be impossible to create an endings that reflected what your chooses were along the way. Impossible!

ME is not a special chase because it is a game you like!

Thanks MovieBob for saying this, to bad it is falling on deaf ears.
I'm redirecting you to an earlier post because I don't like repeating myself [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.358098-The-Big-Picture-Mutants-and-Masses?page=2#14155298]
 

Nimcha

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MatsVS said:
Once again Bob demonstrates an extreme unwillingness to even consider a different viewpoint than his own, much less engage with the actual arguments, as well as an abject lack of ability to do even cursory research on the subject at hand, and not to mention a tendency towards derogatory language and the overall dismissive attitude of his ill-conceived points.
That's funny, this is pretty much what I think about all those people still whining about the ME 3 ending. I spent some time explaining basic stuff to people but nobody wants to listen anymore. The nuance is completely gone. It's basically coming down to some sort of consensus; 'The ME3 ending was awful and if you don't think so you're WRONG and you can f off'.
 

RaikuFA

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370999 said:
RaikuFA said:
370999 said:
RaikuFA said:
370999 said:
So once again Bob doesn't understand the difference between games and movies. And misrepresents the retake ME movement. Standard stuff from him them.
Considering people are demanding donations back, making death threats and making BBB complaints over it, hes a bit justified. Hes just saying those above three make all fans of something look bad.
That is an extreme fringe and accompanies anything which is emotional. Bob is not a man to chide others for childish outbursts, remember the whole comparison between the Transformers movies and his dogs skeleton being dug out, covered in shit and views of it sold? I do.

Also he mentions the FTC without paying any attention to why that happened. That is not about the ending being bad, that is about Bioware outright lying in interviews. They said it wouldn't be an ABC affair and it was.
OK? And? I was promised a demo of MML3 and the sales of said demo would determine if it was gonna be cancelled or not. It got canceled before the demo was released and I can't make a BBB complaint over it cause it will be thrown out, just like your ME3 complaints.
Sorry I don't understand. I don't know what MML3 is or how it relates to this
Its Mega Man Legends 3 and it was said in an interview just like your ending thing that sales of the demo would determine if the game would be canned. A demo was never released and the game was canned. I was promised a demo, never got it and didn't get a game either. Therefore I was lied to just like your ME3 ending thing.
 

The Material Sheep

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Draech said:
dragonswarrior said:
AGH YOU DON'T GET IT YOU DON'T GET IT YOU DON'T GET IT!!!!!

*Breathes* Okay.

How. How Bob. How do fans with INTELLIGENT RESEARCHED CRITIQUES of a game asking for a Goddamn intelligent ending from a group that has previously managed to provide them with such PREVENT ARTISTS FROM TAKING RISKS?!

They don't!! How does that, I don't even... URHGU It makes no goddamn sense!!

You did make some good points though...

But seriously? Telling someone that what they do was shit doesn't stop risk taking. Asking them to change said shit into something better doesn't stop risk taking. Because people will always make risky shit. And they will always make risky quality. That will NEVER change. How does someone asking for something to be quality change that?

Which brings us to the biggest difference between TMNT and ME3. TMNT is trying to make a story with changes to the original. No one has ANY idea whether it will be good quality or not.

Mass Effect 3 had a shitty ending.

That is the difference between them.

Captcha: Face The Music

Damn straight!!
You have creative rights over some1 else product or not?
Pick one.

If not then you get to critique the ending, not change it.

If you have you get to change it. How can you misunderstand that?
I don't think we're saying we have the right to force them to change it. Just that we want them to with our criticism. There's a difference.
 

Terminal Blue

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Agayek said:
In the interest of fairness, while the vast majority of what you have to say here is completely accurate, I feel I must mention that the FTC suit is not fans bitching about a shitty ending. It's fans bitching about false advertising. Whether or not that claim holds any water remains to be seen, I'm sure the legal system will be able to work it out, but from everything I've seen it certainly appears to be a valid complaint.
It holds no water at all.

Mass Effect 3 will enlarge your penis by at least 2 inches

..is false advertising. It makes a specific claim which is demonstrably beyond the scope of the product.

Mass Effect 3 will be a fitting conclusion to an epic story

..is not false advertising no matter how much the result personally disappoints you. Any claims involved are completely vague. Even:

Mass Effect 3 will resolve the plot threads from the previous mass effect games.

..is not false adversing. What qualifies as a plot thread in this case is not specific, and without a specific claim there is no case. As long as the game in any way references the previous games, it could be said to have 'resolved the plot threads'.

And let's not forget. None of these things were actually included in advertising for the game in the first place. They came from individual marketing people and members of the dev team who were expressing their individual opinions on the game. If you read that as an ironclad guaruntee, then that's kind of your problem.

Sorry, but I'm totally with Bob here. This is not a "controversy", you got sold a perfectly functional product which you didn't like. You can express that you didn't like it until you keel over and die, but you have absolutely no right to demand that it be changed.
 

Lunar Templar

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370999 said:
Sorry I don't understand. I don't know what MML3 is or how it relates to this
Mega Man Legends 3, Capcom killed it, AFTER they gotten fans to send in designs for a contest they set up and AFTER promising a demo that would ultimately determine weather the game came out.

as for that whole 'our choices didn't matter' bullshit. ITS A BIOWARE GAME. they suck at 'choice', since they don't know what 'grey area' is, nope just what ever they're calling good, and evil, so deal with it.
 

Karnesdorff

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Gxas said:
Would you be able to give an example of how something that has been coded (read: prewritten) can not be an ABC affair?
Hmm, Something like the Fallout games. The main ending is usually one of a few choices, but the epilogue afterwards lets you know what happened to the people you met and places you visited; the ending may be primarily ABC, but the epilogue makes it feel more like you got a different end from other people who played since a lot of people wouldn't quite get quite the same end as their friends who play the same game (a different choice here, a dead NPC there...), so the Wasteland ends up feeling like 'yours' more. Instead of being A, B or C, it looks more like (A,d,f,g,i,m,o) or (C,e,f,h,i,j,p), each of those choices might have been binary, but all together they make it look more 'fluid'.

It isn't about making computer games that can have a billion endings, for every single player choice, games are inherently linear because they can't predict everything that I can do in a game, but its about making the player feel like their actions weren't ABC. ME3, where Starchild Hitler turns up and forces you to take one of three very similar options without any means to disagree, then you get a recoloured cutscene followed by another cutscene that makes you say 'WTF?' fails in that challenge.

People don't like being forced to see the the code strings that their avatars dance on due to bad writing, it breaks immersion.

K.
 

IceStar100

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Aw this song and dance again.

The way I see it. They will try and sell DLC and tie in to Mass Effect. So yes fans do have a say otherwise their stuff stops selling. Honest since Dragon Age 2 how many comic and book have been put out about that world.

So yeah they have all right to say our work deal with it. We have all right to say our money deal with it. Then if Bioware goes belly up because it lost all the good will of its fans. Are we not going to hear about how it was our fault for not putting money into a company we no longer believe in?

TL:DR
They have all right to their work. They also have all right to go bankrupt.
 

Gxas

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Karnesdorff said:
Gxas said:
Would you be able to give an example of how something that has been coded (read: prewritten) can not be an ABC affair?
Hmm, Something like the Fallout games. The main ending is usually one of a few choices, but the epilogue afterwards lets you know what happened to the people you met and places you visited; the ending may be primarily ABC, but the epilogue makes it feel more like you got a different end from other people who played since a lot of people wouldn't quite get quite the same end as their friends who play the same game (a different choice here, a dead NPC there...), so the Wasteland ends up feeling like 'yours' more. Instead of being A, B or C, it looks more like (A,d,f,g,i,m,o) or (C,e,f,h,i,j,p), each of those choices might have been binary, but all together they make it look more 'fluid'.

It isn't about making computer games that can have a billion endings, for every single player choice, games are inherently linear because they can't predict everything that I can do in a game, but its about making the player feel like their actions weren't ABC. ME3, where Starchild Hitler turns up and forces you to take one of three very similar options without any means to disagree, then you get a recoloured cutscene followed by another cutscene that makes you say 'WTF?' fails in that challenge.

People don't like being forced to see the the code strings that their avatars dance on due to bad writing, it breaks immersion.

K.
So are we complaining about some ending cutscene then?

Like I said above, I have no idea what happens, as I've not even finished the first game. But, if it's an epilogue cutscene that people are complaining about, then this is even more ridiculous to me than it was before.
 

crimson sickle2

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Bob, you got a little offtrack at the end; now I think this whole video was just an introduction into a rant about the retake movement.
 

The Material Sheep

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IceStar100 said:
Aw this song and dance again.

The way I see it. They will try and sell DLC and tie in to Mass Effect. So yes fans do have a say otherwise their stuff stops selling. Honest since Dragon Age 2 how many comic and book have been put out about that world.

So yeah they have all right to say our work deal with it. We have all right to say our money deal with it. Then if Bioware goes belly up because it lost all the good will of its fans. Are we not going to hear about how it was our fault for not putting money into a company we no longer believe in?

TL:DR
They have all right to their work. They also have all right to go bankrupt.
This is exactly it. We took that risk, and a lot of us feel burned by it. So much so that we won't buy things anymore. That's completely fair.
 

Callate

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You see kids, multi-millionaires and media conglomerates can revise things any way they want. They can do test screenings and focus-testings, they can cut and edit and reboot, but that's as close as you will ever get to actually influencing how the things you care about turn out: as proxy for a money-generating process.

You can care, but don't care too much. One, you're likely to get your feelings hurt, and why? So holier-than-thou people can cast disdain on you for giving a shit? Don't be ridiculous. And two, you might harm the ability of artists- or as we call them these days, intellectual property creators- to take risks which are the soul of great art. Or at least, the kindling for the next generation of "re-envisionings" when they sell off their rights to said multi-millionares and media conglomerates so they don't have to warm their houses with fires from big piles of rejected scripts. (Remember, don't care too much!)

What is important to this process- really, really important- is that you give up your money. And then, shut up. Because you are irrelevant to the process beyond your ability to be a revenue stream. The big boys have been trying to tell you this for years, but only recently have they managed to get critics to argue with a straight face that your anger at losing multiple hours of your life towards a result that insults everything you came to care about in those hours is something called "entitlement".

Remember: protect artistic integrity! Buy nine-figure-development-cost-products, and then shut up about them. Thank you.

--

To this, let me add one small note.

I am, myself, deeply ambivalent about the question of re-writing an ending to address an audience's unhappiness about said ending.

But I really don't think it's my place to demean the emotional commitment of people who do feel that way, or to suggest that they're about to destroy the product, or the medium, or... gasp... art itself with this terrible, terrible precedent.

I am deeply skeptical about any argument that can't stand on its own without foretelling crushing doom if its warning isn't heeded. I could take the arguers much more seriously if they would just get down from the pulpit and walk among the hoi polloi, rather than taking up the sword as the defenders of Great Art (ever increasingly (tm).)

Doesn't it seem a little strange that this much anger and fear should be summoned at the idea that creators might listen to their audience?
 

Ralen-Sharr

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I just wish Bob would STFU about Mass Effect. Every time he brings it up, he stirs up a shitstorm and he ends up just crapping on his own videos.

Shut up about it if you want it to go away. Giving it this kind of attention is just throwing gas on the fire.
 

Frozengale

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Personally I agree with Bob. The moaning and whining is just silly and is to much. You want to know how you can show Bioware you are disappointed? Don't buy their next game. It's that simple. You don't need to nerd rage all over the place and become noisy whiny brats. Yes 60 bucks and 30+ hours is an investment, but it is an investment you made with your own money/time and did so willingly. You got burned, but you entered into the social contract, you signed on the dotted line. They promised you a game, you got a game. They did what they thought was best, or were forced into doing. They may have speculated that you would love it but they never promised that it would fulfill all your hopes and dreams about the series.

As for the Ninja Turtles... it's Michael Bay. He takes things and makes them bad, no one should find this surprising.
 

Vault Citizen

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The way that retake Mass Effect was presented to me was that it was a group of fans who wanted to show Bioware that they would be willing to spend money in order to support DLC that changed the ending of the game to a less objectionable state, while at the same time recognising that such action didn't guarentee it would happen and the child's play donations being thrown in as a way to create something good out of the controversy.

I think the effort was hampered by two things, the use of the word "Retake" in the name, and by the reports that people wanted their money back, as if they genuinely expected a direct, concrete result from their donation.
 

Mousse Templar

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"echo chamber of mutual butt-hurt outrage"
I wonder, if the internet only displayed opinions
you disagreed with, would there be less-angry people
or just less angry-people.
 

Stalydan

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templar1138a said:
Thank you. I don't care about the turtles in the slightest, but thank you for the remarks regarding Mass Effect. I have gotten so sick of all the moaning. I haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet because 1: My Xbox is broken and I need to fix it in order to import my save files and 2: I'm waiting for the game to get cheaper so I spend less overall on the game and DLCs.

But all the whining and complaining has been so aggravating to me. I even accidentally ran across a spoiler the other day that nearly brought me to tears in frustration. I happen to feel that the Mass Effect games are the best RPGs I've ever played. Are they perfect? No. But they are the best I've played because of how well they facilitate roleplaying and making me care about the characters I interact with.

I won't go into spoilers about the previous games (because even though they've been out for a while, I will show some basic courtesy to even the smallest percentage of people who haven't played them yet and are curious), but I made decisions in roleplaying during those games that I deeply regret. Those decisions will have consequences in Mass Effect 3, and that saddens me. But at the same time, I'm grateful that Bioware made the game so that could happen.

Ultimately, I don't give a flying feather about the ending because I know I'm going to enjoy the game itself. As they say, it's not the destination, it's the journey.

TL;DR: Dear Internet, shut up and get over it.
Oh yeah. You have fun with that.

I thought I was going to be like that as well but you wait until you actually see the ending after you've gone through the rest of the game and then get back to me on that.

OT: Bob, I respect your opinion on the Turtles because from that aspect, it's possible that Bay misspoke. Thank God he is not directing it but him having anything to do with it at all is a bit frightening.

However, do not bring up the ME3 ending. You don't know how it's different, how many promises were broken and (if it's true) how little involvement the ACTUAL writers got in it!

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/5695/article/mass-effect-3-writer-allegedly-slams-controversial-ending/

If this is true then this really defeats your argument. There is an amount of artistic license that creators should have over their games but when you promise one thing and then totally go against it and say that your fans are part of the creative process, that's too far.

I loved ME3 until the complete mind-fuck of an ending happened. Now, it's a great game but with a huge flaw of completely stripping away all of my previous decisions away from an ending like that, missing huge pieces of explanation and variation in a game that has always shined in choice and consequence whilst presenting you with the knowledge you need to make your decisions the way you want to.
 

Darkmantle

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Ralen-Sharr said:
I just wish Bob would STFU about Mass Effect. Every time he brings it up, he stirs up a shitstorm and he ends up just crapping on his own videos.

Shut up about it if you want it to go away. Giving it this kind of attention is just throwing gas on the fire.
Like I said earlier, it must get him a lot of hits.