The Story Doesn't Matter

[zinho73]

Kaidan was wonderfully characterized. Just saying. I'm a bit of a fangirl about him.

And I knew seconds after finishing the ending that I hated it. But this makes sense from a review perspective. When people are judging your judgment it makes sense to only talk about things that can be factually proven.

Well, A lot of reviews I read were praising the ending, and some said things like "you definitely will get the closure you want". I want they factually prove that.

SPOILER

The mere death of the main character is not closure to the story. So Shepard dies and the Reapers are defeated - if this is enough to warrant a good closure they could simply write this words on a black screen after Marauder Shields (And the worst of it is that I think this is actually better than the actual ending).

 

[The Critic]

Very well said, Mr. Young. I'm in agreement with you on this. I have to say, thoguh, I thought that your words on how a story factors into a review were was the most interesting thing said. I'm in agreement with you there; something that's so subjective should best be left for a post-review op-ed piece.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Yes. Yes, you pretty much are.

If that's what you want to believe it's fine by me. I respect your opinion as a consumer, I just don't respect the opinion of a professional reviewer. Especially not after so many people (myself included) hated the ending and had a shitload of logical arguments to backup our claims to why it sucked. How did some of those people get a job like that is beyond me.

So basically, if I am a consumer, who is not posting a review, and I liked the game and thought it was a great conclusion to the series, crappy ending notwithstanding, I am fine. If I am a reviewer and hold the same opinion, I am unprofessional/paid off/not worthy of respect? I don't get that. Tell me if I am misunderstanding your opinion, but as I understand it now, it makes absolutely no sense to me.

Sorry to get in the way of the discussion - just to add my 2 cents:

Sometimes the reviewer likes a game but he is also able to recognize that some people would not like some aspects of it. The best reviewer can mix their own opinion with a more broad analysis.

The Angry Joe review is something like this in reverse. He clearly dislikes the ending a lot, but recognizes that the game has other merits that are worth an 8/10.

To me, a reviewer that fails to understand what are the expectations for a game like ME3 is a bad reviewer - it simply does not matter if he likes the game or not.

I guess we are in disagreement here. When I read a review, all I want is the reviewers opinion of the game and the reasons they have that opinion clearly spelled out. If I want to know anything about a game I might not like, I can glean that from the meat of the review itself or from a different review. I don't feel a reviewer should be forced to arbitrarily lower or raise their scores depending on whether or not other people will like or dislike the game as much as them. It is up to the reader to decide, based on the reviewers opinion of the game, what to do with the info. But, I digress, that is getting away from the topic at hand. I don't want to lead this comments section down a bunny trail.

 

[gphjr14]

The whole appeal of the series was the idea that choices made during the game wouldn't affect just the ending but the course of the story in sequels. For those who hung in their with the series and replayed each installment trying to get the perfect ending, I can see how the generic endings are a smack in the face.

Personally I've never been that emotionally invested in a video game to be so enraged as people are. There's a lot more going on in the world to be pissed off about than a video game ending.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Here are the facts: reviews said how it's the great and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

There are only two reason they would say that:

1. They are retarded.

2. THEY ALL GOT PAYED TO GIVE A POSITIVE REVIEW!

Seriously, who would buy this game if any major reviewer were to say how the ending destroys the entire trilogy and makes you feel empty and dead inside? NO ONE!

It's so fuckin' obvious what happened in those reviews. There is no justification.

Yes because NO ONE can have a view different then yours ever? right?

I don't particularly care for the ending myself, though I will defend some of its supposed holes because they aren't, but saying they MUST be bribed because their opinion is different is borderline conspiracy.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

I'm of the opinion that the real problem here is that gamers can't hold their load for more than five seconds when a new game is released. Gamers want new games NOW. Many gamers pre-order (a practice I will never understand) and the rest want to buy on the day of release or very shortly afterwards, which means the reviewers need to get advance copies and then play the games in a hurry, which means reviews are rush-jobs performed by people who are, in every sense, friends with the developers.

Gamers vote with their wallets and get the reviews they deserve.

 

[sta697]

great read once again,i have put the me3 fiasco behind but it still hurts,how idiotic of the writers.when an ending is very good or very bad,it's what stays with you,and so the me franchise was no more

ps. i would like to see them do another me,without all the relays and all

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Hmm, i play ME for the story first, then comes gameplay. Don`t get me wrong ( the gameplay is fine) but when i want to play a tps i don`t play ME. ME comes first in terms of story and choices. I guess most ME players just wanted a ending in terms of the context and the choices they made in ME3 (or ME1-3) and are majorly pissed of about the fact that Bioware didn`t deliver (regardless the promise of many multiple endings). Instead they choose to screw it all and created a whole WTF moment as ending for a beloved series. Endings are important the last moment is the lasting one.

edit: @sta697
ooh, you delivered the point faster. Same reason i won`t even play ME3.

 

[frobisher]

Hmm, i play ME for the story first, then comes gameplay. (...) Bioware didn`t deliver (regardless the promise of many multiple endings). Instead they choose to screw it all and created a whole WTF moment as ending for a beloved series.

This. If they decide to use "great story" & "influence the story" in marketing, they don't get to hide behind "artistic integrity" - either they deliver or they don't. Also, "artistic integrity" is hard to apply to story that is being created by a bunch of different people, retconning each other, writing their parts inconsistently and obfuscating responsibility for specific pieces. Calling such pile of ideas "art" in themselves is missing the point - game can be considered as such, but if the artist screws up with the leg, whole sculpture is going to be rightfully criticised and considered a failure. Yes, we can have failures in art too, it is not just a matter of "taste", regardless of how far we got into "applauding intelectual impotency" crazy land in mass media age. Romans didn't use "gustibus" as something akin to "everybody have an opinion", quite the opposite.

On the topic of "journalistic integrity" - conspiracies are not really necessary (although hey, Kane & Lynch case was treated with stonewall of deny&ridicule for soooo long, eh?).It's simply what we get when "opinion" is suddenly the end of it all, the sole purpose of review, even though it is not that much more than "I like chocolate better than ice-cream". Do any of us care if random person from internet likes chocolate especially when standard defense when people point out inconsistencies or ignorance is "it's JUST an opinion"?

You can either have "it is an opinion, deal with it" OR "every major outlet with essentially the same opinions, differing in details and choice of words". Also, both are useless unless we actually know person stating opinions good enough OR we know plenty of other opinions of such person to picture some sort of their thought process. Or sometimes it's just small thing like Hamburger video piece, describing DA2 wall-to-wall female companions as an... achievement of their writers?

Finally, if every single pro-review gives ME3 highest praise (yes, 8/10 counts to, it's not *my* responsibility 2/10 do not happen anymore and numbers are even more worthless this way), can we simply get an honest list of

- "good & bad" (YES! we can use those words without hiding behind an opinion, however strange it might sound, Greeks certainly didn't mind tearing piece of art apart, if it, for example, contained elements that screwed up with the genre)

- "promised & delivered" (it would be a bit riskier to sell PR masterpieces like "16 different endings!!!" if there was something harder to dismiss as "raging fans" at the end of the road)

...instead of pretending it is "I liked Garrus, but Tali didn't do much for me"? It could let journalists to actually do what they are ... supposed to do: capture an audience with their words and craft while writing about the same bloody thing every other journalist does, not with their tales about irrelevant tastes.

But gee, that would be... hard?

 

[Sylveria]

I'll just put this here for reviewers. Hopefully Mr. Young will do an article on this double standard.

WRPG: Save the world = best story ever made
JRPG: Save the world = JRPG cliche would not play again

I'll take my group of androgynous 18yr olds to save the world any day tyvm!

Here's a simple thing, when people play a game for the story, the story matters. If you want a pure "game" game, just make that. Don't put in a story or make extensive mechanics BASED on story interaction.. like ME then say "Ah it doesn't matter, it's about the gameplay." That is a huge cop-out.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Should he have punished the game even though it was 30 hours of fun followed by ten minutes of drooling stupid?

I won't enjoy pizza with rotten chicken even if it's only small % of all ingredients. :]

 

[Therumancer]

Here is the thing, reviewers tend to attract followings of people who agree with them and share similar tastes, and thus respect their advice. Saying that reviewers should ignore story because it's subjective is incorrect, rather they should know about a game, in detail, before they publish a review and their opinion on things like the story is going to influance what people who follow that reviewer think. When reviewers become obsessed with trying to do their stuff for mass appeal, and what everyone wants to hear or might think, then they are missing the point.

Of course then again things like page views/site hits are a big deal to those who hire the reviewers in many cases, so trying to draw in the largest group of the populance favors them, and I'd imagine that trickles down to the reviewers they pay.

Reviewers saying they do not have time to review a game properly is not an excuse, as that means they are not doing the job properly. Needing to review a game quickly so as to review the next game and get another paycheck for an article is half the problem. Granted no reviewer can keep up with all the releases, which is one of the big reasons there should almost always be more than one reviewer on staff. For a game like Mass Effect a reviewer should be expected to put 40-60 hours into the game and do the required research if they have not playeed early gamers in the series. That is for all intents and purposes the job.

The issue of "taking bribes" is an issue because reviewers, and most importantly the sites that employ them, have their financial stability tied directly to the industry they are supposed to be reviewing and criticizing, and that creates a major conflict of interests that has come to a head in things like the Gerstmann scandal of yesterday. Ideally reviwers should be kept seperate from the industry and have little or no contact with it other than the products they review. Reviwers and critics should by definition not be attending events like E3, or PAX or getting to know the "great people in the industry" because that can cloud judgement... of course how to achieve this is an big issue. Honestly while Forbes has problems I am tending to gravitate towards sources like that whose fortunes are not directly tied to the gaming industry for information.

As time goes on I increasingly think reviewers need to have a fairly adversarial relationship with the gaming industry, much like food critics and resteraunts, or book critics with authors. It's not nice, but a situation where popular critics can literally wreck a creator's career act as a sort of balance on those they "police" by ensuring they do the best possible work.

For example, if you've followed the reason crap about "New Vegas" with stories that the game was rushed out without proper quality assurance testing despite what the Devs want, and then they missed a bonus because of scoring 1% too low on metacritic, you sort of see the point. If reviewers were considerably more adversarial and influential ones could say shut down a studio or publisher almost entirely with a few bad hits, you'd virtually guarantee that they would spend a LOT of time on quality assurance and not release products in that fashion. Right now the fact that the reviewers at least don't do their jobs properly and/or aren't feared (before even getting into the issue of bribery, or influnance of their employers who need industry advertising dollars) has done a lot to fuel the entire "well, we can patch it later" mentality.

 

[T3hSource]

Wow,I haven't seen reviewers being bashed for not telling that the ending was disappointing.

I did read an ME3 review on Rock,Paper,Shotgun ("Wot I Think" is how they call it) and all I got was: combat has been ramped up to be challenging and dialog choices have more of an "umph" to them.Of course there were vague refrences to the story itself,but I didn't mind,they weren't who knows how spoiler-ish.
It was well written and ofc it doesn't have a numeric score,which is pretty much a policy on RPS that I respect very much,leaves me to consider things for myself.

 

[Something Amyss]

Even if story comments do make it into a review, nobody can agree on just how much they should impact the score. Angry Joe hated the ending to Mass Effect 3 really bad, but he still gave the game 8/10. Was he wrong? Should he have punished the game even though it was 30 hours of fun followed by ten minutes of drooling stupid? Depends on who you ask, and it's basically just an extension of the whole, "How to you assign a number to a game?" argument anyway.

Angry Joe had a LOT of complaints. I was amazed by how much complaining he did, followed up by an 8/10 score and giving the series his "badass" seal of approval. It's not just about the ending, then, and it's hard to reconcile Joe's claims with his score and its reflective "awesome." Joe spent a full third of the review ranting about the game, anf while I understand some of the elements (Day 1 DLC) were things his fans agree should not impact score, a good chunk of that rant should have.

Honestly, I think Joe's a terrible reviewer for this exact sort of reason. His scores often don't make sense given the context of his reviews. I know a lot of people criticise game journalists, but even if their reviews are horrible, there is some parity between what they say and the number they give the game.

On a side note, 2,000 words? I've never paid much attention to word count in reviews, but wow. As a freelancer for newspapers, I'm usually asked to put 500 words in on a subject. If game journalists have to do four times that, yeah, I must show some bloody respect.

I'll just put this here for reviewers. Hopefully Mr. Young will do an article on this double standard.

WRPG: Save the world = best story ever made
JRPG: Save the world = JRPG cliche would not play again

Hypocrisy in gaming? Tu blague!

 

[survivor686]

I understand the logic of, "the first thirty hours were good, it's not fair to condemn it for the last ten minutes."

On the other hand, a story without a decent ending is like a house without a roof. The rest of the house might be fine, but the roof is kind of important.

You sir, hit it right on the nail.

If I may add another point, the majority of game journalists are exposed to a wider array of games in a week than the average consumer. Hence each game they've played represent a smaller investment of time/money/emotion than say your average consumer.

 

[zinho73]

Yes. Yes, you pretty much are.

If that's what you want to believe it's fine by me. I respect your opinion as a consumer, I just don't respect the opinion of a professional reviewer. Especially not after so many people (myself included) hated the ending and had a shitload of logical arguments to backup our claims to why it sucked. How did some of those people get a job like that is beyond me.

So basically, if I am a consumer, who is not posting a review, and I liked the game and thought it was a great conclusion to the series, crappy ending notwithstanding, I am fine. If I am a reviewer and hold the same opinion, I am unprofessional/paid off/not worthy of respect? I don't get that. Tell me if I am misunderstanding your opinion, but as I understand it now, it makes absolutely no sense to me.

Sorry to get in the way of the discussion - just to add my 2 cents:

Sometimes the reviewer likes a game but he is also able to recognize that some people would not like some aspects of it. The best reviewer can mix their own opinion with a more broad analysis.

The Angry Joe review is something like this in reverse. He clearly dislikes the ending a lot, but recognizes that the game has other merits that are worth an 8/10.

To me, a reviewer that fails to understand what are the expectations for a game like ME3 is a bad reviewer - it simply does not matter if he likes the game or not.

I guess we are in disagreement here. When I read a review, all I want is the reviewers opinion of the game and the reasons they have that opinion clearly spelled out. If I want to know anything about a game I might not like, I can glean that from the meat of the review itself or from a different review. I don't feel a reviewer should be forced to arbitrarily lower or raise their scores depending on whether or not other people will like or dislike the game as much as them. It is up to the reader to decide, based on the reviewers opinion of the game, what to do with the info. But, I digress, that is getting away from the topic at hand. I don't want to lead this comments section down a bunny trail.

Fair enough. I would just like to point out that it is not arbitrary scoring (at least, not more arbitrary than assigning a score at all). Also, the technical flaws might not even be reflected in the score, but they must be referenced to in the review.

Let´s suppose a reviewer really liked Green Lantern (the movie), because he digs campy stuff. That's OK, but he must point out that the CGI is bad, that the acting is stiff and so on, otherwise he doesn't really know what he is talking about.

 

[Akafrank]

Thanks Shamus:
Whenever people talk about how narrative in games can be overlooked I think of Vanquish. Loved that game, the mechanics and the play. Tuned out of the narrative in the tutorial, and never went back. I think the thing few were expecting is how much the narrative in ME3 mattered to the fans.

 

[mfeff]

Forbes has been running some interesting articles concerning Mass Effect 3, and "Journalistic Tampering" by the publisher... I wonder "just how much" all this "re-spin" has cost em?

Artistic Integrity?

hahahahahaha.... you have to have integrity to even attempt to stack that house of cards.

 

[Inkidu]

Seamus is right. As a literary man, I can give you the review of the content of a book in five minutes. Now a critical review is a different beast. Critical views have a thesis. They take a stand and try to prove something. A review of the content is a book report. You don't prove anything, you just state facts.

Game review equals book review. This this and this. This is implemented right or wrong.

Critical review take time. I can even give you a few basic theories to come out of ME3 alone.

The Indoctrination Theory is a critical review.

also there's (I say my because I think I put it on another site first, and I don't know how pervasive it's gotten) my in depth Jesus-Shepard Allegory review as a counter to the indoctrination Theory.

I did it in a few days because lets face it. There's not a whole lot of research out there for video game critique beyond the primary source. However, once this stuff start getting published more and more, you're going to see an upswing in a lot of critical theory

 

[TastyCarcass]

yeah bioware is praised because the gameplay is AMAZING in their games.

Wait no, they were praised because of the story and characters, which they failed to deliver with on ME3.


It's not paid review, it's The Escapist couldn't be trusted with the Mass Effect 3 review because there were advertisements all over the site. If they gave them a bad review, EA would pull the advertisements, which is the Escapist's main source of income. But the problem here is that this has caused your readers to loose their trust in you.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if EA specifically told you not to mention the lackluster ending. A similar thing happened with MGS4 and the loading times.