The Escapist's Game of the Year 2012

[Warachia]

I'm pretty shocked ME 3 won, people were going on so much about the ending so much I figured it wouldn't even make top 5.

 

[Warachia]

I'm not sure what your sayin ghere

He's saying if suddenly, right when Luke confronts the emperor, the emperor shows him that the empire created several utopias and the darkside was a necessary evil, and he'll stop using it once the rebels are gone, you know, things that make no sense and don't hold up when put into context.
That aside I really liked the extended cut, you should try it if you hated the original ending.

 

[Vault101]

I'm not sure what your sayin ghere

He's saying if suddenly, right when Luke confronts the emperor, the emperor shows him that the empire created several utopias and the darkside was a necessary evil, and he'll stop using it once the rebels are gone, you know, things that make no sense and don't hold up when put into context.
That aside I really liked the extended cut, you should try it if you hated the original ending.

ah...thanks

I mena yeah, thats pretty much what the original ending feels like, and part of the reason is there was an alternate ending orginally planned that was forshadowed in ME2 (the sun on haestrom) and darkspace and all that....I'm not sure its that great but depending on how it was handled

of coarse ANYTHING would be better than what we originally got, even if shepard finds a hidden curtain and it turns out it was actually the "wizard" of oz speaking into a microphone....

I will play the extended cut at some point

 

[IronMit]

I'm not sure what your sayin ghere

He's saying if suddenly, right when Luke confronts the emperor, the emperor shows him that the empire created several utopias and the darkside was a necessary evil, and he'll stop using it once the rebels are gone, you know, things that make no sense and don't hold up when put into context.
That aside I really liked the extended cut, you should try it if you hated the original ending.

Thanks lol.. I know the post wasn't directed at me but i feel like replying

I watched the endings and additional scenes on youtube myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NNUImNL9Ok

This video sums up what some people think of the endings

I will add;

1.My assets still didn't directly affect the battle- apart from 2x2 different mini cutscenes
2.My assets only affected what I could select at the end
3.Deus ex machina throughout the entire game...no ending re-do could fix this
4.The order-chaos explanation was not changed. It couldn't be..they would have to undo the cut and paste forshadowing of this from ME3. (rannoch reaper and vendetta)
5.citadel was still captured and got to earth off screen
6. They spent 3games changing my opinion about synthetics just to tell me they were right the first time...something tells me they made up this ending out of the blue- you don't even have to read the Drew interviews and haestrom sun forshadowing

All the new ending did for me was to explain exactly what they meant by something that is lore breaking

yh i'm still bitter! lol

 

[IronMit]

I'm not sure what your sayin ghere

He's saying if suddenly, right when Luke confronts the emperor, the emperor shows him that the empire created several utopias and the darkside was a necessary evil, and he'll stop using it once the rebels are gone, you know, things that make no sense and don't hold up when put into context.
That aside I really liked the extended cut, you should try it if you hated the original ending.

ah...thanks

I mena yeah, thats pretty much what the original ending feels like, and part of the reason is there was an alternate ending orginally planned that was forshadowed in ME2 (the sun on haestrom) and darkspace and all that....I'm not sure its that great but depending on how it was handled

of coarse ANYTHING would be better than what we originally got, even if shepard finds a hidden curtain and it turns out it was actually the "wizard" of oz speaking into a microphone....

I will play the extended cut at some point

By alternate ending you mean the original motivation behind the reapers.
In the interview with Drew (original lead writer) he said there were many reaper motivations discussed but none were set in stone and things can change. This really annoyed me...i think he must be just defending his old friends.

If he is speaking the truth then that is quite depressing...I invested in a vision, a planned trilogy..Not something that was made up on the fly.
Another starwars analogy incoming.... It would be like if star wars fans found out when episode 4 was released..Darth Vader was not meant to be Luke's father. Old fan boys would just die if this came out. You can create illusive man and collectors to further the plot, themes etc...but not the how and why of the reapers.

 

[scoopsss]

Something is wrong here. The Escapist community was particularly negative towards ME3's ending so I find it extremely hard to believe that the majority would pick it as GOTY. I suspect some macho trolling is involved here...

 

[Slash2x]

Less than 5% split from the "top" game to the one in 7th place......... Not really a game of the year... More like several games of the year and the rest of the crap. Want me to say it is game of the year? Show me a game that has a 15-25% lead on the rest.

 

[Slash2x]

Words and rage

You -really- wanted blue babies, didn't you?

The ending was as good as it could have been, given the ridiculously branched plotlines that were possible. Deus Ex Machina was the only solution that could have been done without another ten or twenty million being spent on the game's development.

Fucking reality, how does it work?

No, the writing was on the wall, and I was totally prepared to sacrifice Shepard to the greater cause of defeating the Reapers.

And really, they could have done it all without introducing the space god and even doing it on the Citadel.

--

Hell, we had all the plot devices already in play - begging to be used. With the Geth help (friendship or forced) we've have Reaper code from Nazara (Sovereign), but to use it, we have to hijack the biggest baddest Reaper in town, because once the other Reapers know whats up, they will attempt to stop it. So Shepard and team head to Earth, drawing out Harbinger.

Using a surgical strike (a plot point in ME3), we blast a hole into him [Harbinger] which Shepard team is able to land into (we already have the internal reaper assets from ME2 to reuse). After blasting thru a bunch of husks (also while attempting to resist his mind control affects), we reach the creamy core center of Harbinger (his larva terminator - a nice ME2 throw back - yes it was full retard in ME2, but if you are going to sell a story, if you introduce full retard, you keep full retard, or people know your game is long up).

After another "Sovereign-isk" conversation (a ME1 throw back) (which may or not introduce the ME "midichlorians" [we kill organics to protect them from being killed by AI's in the future]), we infect his larva core using the Geth\Reaper code.

Then using Harbinger as the vessel (the only ship that can withstand attacks from other reapers while docked too the Crucible docked to the Citadel in able to activate the Crucible). And then with your fleet acting as interference (your EMS score matters here, because reapers will attempt to destroy the Crucible now, so a higher EMS means more ships to prevent that). So the better the EMS score, the less relays get damaged and/or destroyed (including Earth/Citadel) when the blast does go off. But still, the activation of the Crucible at its power point kills Shepard and his team in Harbinger.

The end choices are still [control/destroy/*anything else other then merge DNA/machine choice*].

--

End result, the long running themes of the game are clearly kept intact, we get to use the plot devices introduced ME2/ME3 (reaper code/EMS score), we re-used game artwork\assets (internal Reaper). And the best part, we don't introduce a last minute space magic space god that gives us our ultimate choices; those choices are still firmly left up to Shepard and his team (player agency is kept intact).

Now tell me that hijacking a Reaper isn't cooler, over speaking with the nonsensical space magic god that we got?

Good choices.... I was always a fan of the most logical one for the BS they gave us.... Need Biomass for the green god plot hole fixing laser convertey thingie? *grabs any one of the dead people nearby BECAUSE IT IS A FUCKING WAR ZONE IE Anderson* Cool I got this. *throws into beam* Ok now what?

 

[Doom972]

ME3 for the most part is a good game, but when you have a horrendously botched ending, that should have excluded it as GOTY.
No, its just not a bad ending, its a horrendously botched ending.

The ending was fine stop whining it was still better than about 95% of games endings. Also if you want to complain what about the side-quests in the citadel or the bugs. The game didn't feel complete in just a technical sense.

Sorry, but I disagree, I think 99% of other games have BETTER endings then ME3. ME3 ending is the only game ending I have never known (and I've been playing and beating games since early 90's) that has physically and mentally caused me to stopped playing an entire series. I've played other games with *quote* bad *unquote* endings, but I've still gladly gone back in for 2nd's and even 3rd's. Hell, even ME2 terminator larva ending is tolerable, despite how bad it really is. I hate it, but it makes some sense based on the narrative of the entire game before battling it.

ME3 on the other hand, it's ending wasn't fine from a literary standpoint. It violates nearly every known understood (written and unwritten) rule of "good story telling".
If the story was just a secondary means for you to go from point A to point B to shoot mooks in the face, while going "BANG BANG SHEPARD SMASH!!!", then sure, I can see how ME3 ending was just fine for you.
The ending of ME3 reminds me of how my 5 year old tries to explain things she doesn't yet grasp or know about the world yet; the ideas she comes up with are nonsensical and random, but I adore her for it. ME3 ending shouldn't sound like it comes from a 5 year old.
Maybe because I still like reading books, it seems like reading books is quickly no longer a thing to do, perhaps kids just aren't understanding enough "good" stories these days. Is that why all of you give ME3 a pass? What was the last 20 books you read because you wanted to read, and not because you were forced to read it for a class?

To be fair, most games in recent years have botched endings. It was just more upsetting in ME's case because it's a story in which the player develops a character and a story over three games and can get very invested in. My 2011 favorite, Deus Ex: Human Revolution also had a botched ending. If you want to see one of the worst endings in recent years, check out Rage's ending - that one made me angry.

I guess AAA studios have problems sticking to the schedule and budget, and since apparantly only 20% of the people who own a game will finish it (I still wonder where that statistic came from), the ending gets botched. At least Bioware fixed ME3's ending post release.

OT: I voted for X-COM but I don't mind ME3 being GOTY. I think more people should play FTL though.

I think there is a very different, notion of botched and bad. I may find many endings bad, but if I can at least get a sense of where the ending was coming from, while I may not like it, it isn't botched. ME3 is botched because its a last minute ass pull that throws good writing out the window. Did they point themselves into a corner, oh hell yes the fuck they did, and I recognize that, but really, setting the house on fire was the best answer?
The ME development team was never good on making good choices.

Personally, I am fine with DE:HR endings, because each ending was foreshadowed in the final mission zone. Yes it was bad for the selection was a choose your ending at the very end, but at least the choices, for the ending, was clearly addressed before hand by the NPC's that gave you that ending option. Also, the reason behind the delivery method for the ending choices was also clearly indicated before hand in the previous missions before the final mission. Yes, the endings may have been, and most likely are bad, but they weren't random ass-pulls.

And I still have serious issues with ME3 post release extended cut ending. It goes from your choice fucks everything over (or you are to be believed that that because they don't tell you anything), to everybody is now shitting rainbows and lollipops and are bestest of best friends because you kill the Reapers; Well Done!, despite being dead.


Point being, you can always look back on a game and go, the ending could have been better, it could have satisfied me better. But to call an ending a botched ending I think should only be saved for such endings such as ME3 (doesn't maintain theme or narrative and introduces a last minute magical plot device as the "answer".)


And I think you are correct on your %, depending on the game, it will be somewhere between 10%-20% I think a good place to look is Steam. Find the achievement you get for completing the story line for games 2+ years old, and the number of people who earn that achievement is staggeringly low.

I said botched and I meant it. The ending to DXHR was botched.

Spoiler

They obviously ran out of cutscene/animation/voiceover budget so they pieced together some generic stock footage with Adam Jensen narrating.

We only notice it in good games because we care more about those.

I'm going to go back to my Rage example: almost no one seemed to care about its ending. I bought it months after it came out an I haven't stumbled upon a single article/forum post mentioning its botched ending since it came out, except for one that I made after finishing it. People expected it to be a simple shooter with little to no plot so nobody cared. If you haven't seen it, I dare you to watch it on YouTube (complete with the final level composed of grey linear corridors if you feel very courageous) - That makes Mass Effect 3's ending look like a piece of art.

 

[Hyper-space]

People often tend to forget that it was mostly a very, very vocal minority that whined over ME3. I remember when people were making polls, during the shitstorm, on whether people liked the game or or not, the majority opinion was always very positive, despite the campaign of some people to prove otherwise.

 

[nodlimax]

ME3 game of the year?...Nice joke!..............Oh......you're serious?.....Well people aren't very bright these days, so it's easy to explain that way.

But honestly there have been way better games than ME3. Even if you ignore the ME3 ending the game is still bad or mediocre AT BEST. Take away the story and there is nothing left that makes that game enjoyable. It's boring, annoying and repetitive. The story made the game bearable for me until the last ten minutes and after the ending every little thing I didn't like about the game (which was everything except the characters and the story) came back into focus.

I'm at least happy that games like FTL or Walking Dead made it into the higher rankings.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Bullshit. Just... BULLSHIT!

The piece of shit that torpedoed a promising game series gets game of the year!? No! NO! NO!!!

Fuck this game, it couldn't hold a candle to any of the other games on this list. It doesn't deserve half the accolades it received. And yet it receives GOTY, despite EA reaming us at every turn. Dishonored, a game with actual (and I'm flagellating myself for saying this) artistic merit gets forth place?

Escapists, I am disappoint.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

People often tend to forget that it was mostly a very, very vocal minority that whined over ME3. I remember when people were making polls, during the shitstorm, on whether people liked the game or or not, the majority opinion was always very positive, despite the campaign of some people to prove otherwise.

Proof please. Otherwise, dispense with this "silent majority" nonsense.

Just because someone couldn't be arsed to ***** about it online doesn't mean they were fine with it.

 

[Gylukios]

Even with all the hate, in fact, especially because of all the hate and whining and moaning, Mass Effect 3 can only be game of the year, regardless of what anyone individually thought about it.

No other game this year prompted quite the level of response that Me3 did, it was raging through every video game message board there is. And it raged on and on for weeks. And then Bioware actually gave us the Extended Cut (whatever you thought about it, good or bad) for free! With no other game this year did any of that happen.

 

[Kyrinn]

I did not expect ME3 to win, especially here on the escapist. I mean it's a good game (minus the ending), but honestly it's hardly GOTY material in my opinion.
Anyways I voted for Kung Fu Pandas because I'm still playing and enjoying it after all these years. If only Cataclysm had never happened.

 

[Tom Goldman]

ME3 is a good game with some terrible design choices, such as tying multiplayer in to the final ending you can get, the somehow even more annoying and less-fun [than ME2] space exploration/scanning game, and the really odd (and often boring) fetch quest mechanics such as forcing you to visit every floor of the Citadel and look at your map to figure out where a quest NPC is. I get that the focus was on the incredibly complex character/storyline weave tied into two previous games, a massive undertaking, but I personally feel these and many other "smaller" aspects could have taken the game to the next level and made it much less repetitive.

 

[PirateRose]

14% is not much of a win. That means 86% of the people voted for something else. I knew there would be an issue like this, with so many options they threw into this thing, it was far too spread out. If it had been something like over 50% of the votes, then I'd say ME3 truly won, but this isn't a win at all.

It's a minority that enjoyed the game.

 

[Fijiman]

When the hell were we supposed to vote? Why did no one tell me about this?