OldDirtyCrusty said:
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?