Mass Effect Thread

edited October 2012 in General Chat
WARNING SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT 3

Just finished Mass Effect 3 and was having a great time until the last 5 minutes of the game.

The ending you get is probably the most depressing ending and since this is mass effect that´s probably the bad ending right ?

Nope all the endings are almost identical no matter what you do and the outrage on biowares forums are huge.

I would not mind a sad ending but there is no explanation to what happened this is the gaming equivalent to the sopranos ending.

Nothing is really resolved and there is not even an epilogue.

Oh well just look at biowares forums then you know

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/category/355/index
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Comments

  • edited March 2012
    Well we do have the Origin-Thread that is already misused as the ME3-thread.

    I heard the ending is bad. I have not seen it or know what it is but if it is The Whispered World bad then that's just bullshit.
  • edited March 2012
    Read a few of the threads. Weak, Bioware. Weak.
  • edited March 2012
    Sad endings aren't bad endings.
  • edited March 2012
    The lack of anything good about sad endings are bad.
  • edited March 2012
    I'm just going to come out and say it. It's video game writing. There's rarely anything good about such.
  • edited March 2012
    DAISHI wrote: »
    I'm just going to come out and say it. It's video game writing. There's rarely anything good about such.

    That is not an excuse. Great writing is always the exception rather than the rule, but that doesn't mean a half-baked narrative should be acceptable just because it's a video game. Especially not with this whole 'cinematic experience' BS that is pervasive in the games industry right now.
  • edited March 2012
    Hmm... maybe this will mean the game will go on sale sooner?

    [hopeful look]

    Nah.
  • edited March 2012
    Yeah but if you've been paying any attention, these cinematic experiences have almost -all- been half baked writing. Doesn't matter if it's Mass Effect, Call of Duty, JRPGs or the like, somehow people have been deceived into thinking it's good writing, but it's not. It is entertaining sometimes, in the same way I think Transformers is entertaining, but good? High quality? Not really. I'm not saying that being entertaining isn't good enough; it is. But even stories that get high marks for storytelling are often still in the 'entertaining' category rather than the 'quality' category.

    Alright so I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone. But, the ending to the game mirrors events that happen in science fiction like the Foundation series (which was amazing) and historically mirrors events in the Roman Empire (which the Foundation series was modeled after in terms of imperial decline). I don't see it as a bad ending in that regard.
  • edited March 2012
    I don't expect great literary works to be contained within video games. All I expect of them is to be entertaining and not face-palm-inducingly banal. I'm not directing this at ME3 in particular, as I haven't played it yet. Just a general point.
  • VainamoinenVainamoinen Moderator
    edited March 2012
    I just finished the game, and I agree: This is bad, bad writing.

    Although you get to "choose" between two three endings, the choice comes through a stupid deus ex machina (quite literally, actually) at the very end of the game.

    Also, they employ a reality which was completely absent in the three games to shoehorn this "choice" in. This is not about a "sad" or a "happy" ending, this is about an ending that has zero to do with the series. There can not be a feeling of accomplishment for the players. Bioware is now taking a beating because fans demand a "happier" ending. I think what they REALLY want is one that actually makes sense.

    Lastly, who survives and who doesn't depends on a certain score which seems to be massively raised through the stupid Origin multiplayer mode. I did whatever I could to raise this without the multiplayer, and I thought I did things pretty perfectly. To no avail.

    A failure for the ages, unfortunately. :mad:
  • edited March 2012
    I'm going to make a reassesment right now, now that I understand some of the finer points of why people are upset.

    While I still stand by my original statements in general, the deus ex element is heavy handed, and some of the characters are heavily out of character. The 'who survives' thing is ridiculous.

    My reaction was indeed to all the whining about 'oh no the Galaxy' but a lot of the rest of the complaints I can see are quite valid.
  • edited March 2012
    I just finished the game, and I agree: This is bad, bad writing.

    I went through some threads, never playing this game before. I understood the story, I understood the direction they wanted to go with it... But the ending is absolutely stupid.

    Did someone accidentally sat on the script and crushed the last pages? What kind of an ending is that?!

    Bad...bad...BAD writing indeed.
  • edited March 2012
    My theory is Bioware is looking to pull off a Fallout 3 and release an alternate ending as paid dlc.
  • edited March 2012
    I see a lot of people think the fans of ME (I'm not a big fan of ME, btw) are pissed off because the endings are 'sad' or some shit like that... they're not. The biggest complaint so far that I've seen, is that the ending doesn't take any choices you've previously made into consideration. And you know what? That IS a very valid complaint.

    BioWare's concept of 'take a character from ME1 to ME3 with all the choices you've done, influencing the ending of the final chapter' that they were going with ever since ME1 was the most advertised thing. It's something that fans loved about the series. And they really wanted to see how their choices would influence the ending, sad or not. And the endings that BioWare has presented in ME3 render that concept totally pointless.

    There is absolutely no reason now to go through ME1 to ME3 with different choices, because they don't matter in the end. And that's why fans are so pissed, because this is precisely the thing that BioWare has hyped up - that your choices in this and previous games WILL matter. And they don't.
  • edited March 2012
    Perhaps it's statement of life. No matter who we are, what we do, how we act, it all ends in disappointment?

    ...or maybe it's just bad writing.
  • edited March 2012
    Johro wrote: »
    Perhaps it's statement of life. No matter who we are, what we do, how we act, it all ends in disappointment?

    This is the summary of life.
  • edited March 2012
    From when I saw the advert for ME3's start, I wondered what the how bad the endings would be, and so for once I hunted down spoilers. Then the script leak came...

    Well, I could point and laugh at those who spent money on it, despite having seen the spoilers but I won't. People can hope. I waited to see what the actual endings were. he endings were exactly what it said in the script. Taking away choice at the end.

    On the other hand a lot was done right.

    Legions "death". He dies straight out in one of the endings, and in the other two it's not strictly death, but Legion does cease as an individual.

    Now if Me3 had been a standalone game the endings would stil have been lazy, but there wouldn't bee the same ire, but it isn't...
  • edited March 2012
    Somebody is going to have to explain to me what is so shitty about the ME3 ending.
  • edited March 2012
    From Wikipedia. Note the emphasis:
    Left with no choice, Shepard gathers up all of the forces available and attacks the Reapers on Earth, with the aim of recapturing the Citadel and combining it with the Crucible to complete the weapon. While the fleets battle the Reapers in orbit, a large ground attack force lands in London where the bulk of the remaining human resistance is waiting, and where a transport beam connected to the Citadel is located. Shepard reunites with Anderson and they both fight together to reach the beam. However, the intervention of Harbinger wipes out much of the attack force attempting to reach the beam, leaving only Shepard and Anderson. Inside the Citadel, Shepard and Anderson are stopped by an indoctrinated Illusive Man. Shepard manages to kill the Illusive Man, but not before Anderson is killed as well. Shepard manages to open the Citadel, allowing the Crucible to dock with it, before losing consciousness.

    Shepard is then approached by an artificial intelligence, which identifies itself as the Catalyst and the entity controlling the Reapers. It reveals that the cycle the Reapers enforce is an attempt to prevent organic life from wiping itself out by creating synthetic life, as the creators are always doomed to be destroyed by the created. The Reapers are in fact preserving the advanced organic races by using them to create new Reapers, and leaving space for the more primitive species to evolve.However, the Catalyst points out that since Shepard has managed to come this far, its priorities have now changed. The Catalyst then gives Shepard three choices: Destroy the Reapers and all synthetic life, take control of the Reapers, or initiate synthesis between organic and synthetic life, creating an entirely new life form. However, regardless of Shepard's choice, all three endings result in Shepard's apparent death and the destruction of the entire mass relay network. The Normandy, which is in the middle of a mass relay jump when they are destroyed, is forced to crash land on an alien planet, stranding the crew. They exit the crashed ship and look up to the alien sky. If the player's Effective Military Strength is high enough and the "Destroy" ending is chosen, it will be revealed that Shepard may still be alive.

    In a post-credits sequence, a man and a child are seen on an alien planet looking to the sky. The man tells the child how there are billions of stars and planets in the galaxy, and how all of them are populated by countless alien races and cultures. The child then asks the man to tell him another story about "The Shepard".
  • edited March 2012
    The highlighted part, in my opinion, doesn't matter.
  • edited March 2012
    and the destruction of the entire mass relay network
    I wonder if that includes the citadel. I really liked the ending of ME1 and the things you found out about the citadel & the Keepers.
  • edited March 2012
    From reading that, I don't see how the ending is any worse than any other game. I understand that people are frustrated because they were apparently told that the past 2 games mattered and such, yet in the end, they didn't, but the actual ending isn't really THAT bad.
  • edited March 2012
    Wikipedia wrote:
    However, regardless of Shepard's choice, all three endings result in Shepard's apparent death and the destruction of the entire mass relay network.
    ...So?
  • edited March 2012
    Some people like God endings, I suppose. I guess they should have foreshadowed it and called it Mass Effect³. Some people would've seen it coming then.

    EDIT: Oh wait, the box art does look like it's "cubed". How did no one see it coming?
  • edited March 2012
    ...So?

    Yup.

    Although someone listed their reasons in a longer way.

    1. The endings are extremely sad. This is a much-maligned criticism by individuals who associate depth with the perceived darkness of the endings, and that may or may not be a fair point. Regardless, it stands as obvious that many people were hoping for an ending which proffered some hope beyond that available in even the 'happiest' of endings.

    2. The endings contain plotholes. The escape of the Normandy and the teleportation of her crew (including the formerly deceased) are the most obvious, but the lack of sufficient explanation regarding the Catalyst's efforts and origin also makes many of his/its motivations bizarre and unsatisfying.

    3. The endings fail to fit in with the broadest themes of the series. Slightly different from 1, this criticism notes that the story of Commander Shepherd has always been a story of achieving the impossible with the help of a close crew and rigorous preparation. The endings as offered do not incorporate the crew, do not change significantly in response to your preparation, and while perhaps technically constitute doing the impossible, fail to meet even that low bar which is a solution that does not have an inevitable cross-racial holocaust and galactic dark age as its result.

    4. The endings lack variety. This criticism can be directed at both the artistic and story aspects of the ending – the results of the ending decision not only vary little (at least, and this is important, on a scale which is important to our experiences in the game), but the resulting cinematics have only minor differences, and the various sub-endings result in changes so small as to be entirely unnoticeable. Consider that some way could've been contrived to make the Synthetic option differ from the Control option in a fashion greater than a change in the color of the 'light' and a different Texture for Joker in the games final seconds.

    5. The mechanics of the ending are not appropriate. Without repeating the various criticisms as regards the ending closely mirroring Deus Ex's, the culmination of the story with a game-show-esque approach to saving the world very much fails to be satisfactory, especially when Mass Effect has otherwise been about the integration of choice into the experience

    6. The endings lack dependency on the player's choices prior to the last five minutes. This is important, because the entire rest of Mass Effect 3 was about reacting to previous decisions; consider that, provided one is able to fill the 'war asset' bar in a satisfactory manner via some other means, the decisions in the third game serve no purpose to explain, shape, or enhance the endings. This seems contrary to the spirit of the other 95% of the experience.

    7. The endings do not make sense given the character of Shepherd. As has been state elsewhere, we are playing some heroic badass who has otherwise talked down to, shrugged off, and inevitably defeated everyone who threatened, cajoled, or otherwise tried to force him to do something he didn't wish to do. In the ending to ME3, this character offers no rigorous questioning, no protests, no counter-arguments, no discussion of any kind save a resigned sort of death-march which could not be more contrary to his character. This is distressing.

    8. The endings have implications, perhaps unintended, which seem to ruin the ME Universe. Admittedly, many of these implications could be avoided, but the lack of contrary evidence fosters a suspicion that these matters were either otherwise not considered, or supposed to be generally acceptable. Indeed, they might even be, but only with proper elaboration, of which there is none.

    9. The endings fail to provide closure. There is, as a diagram that is floating around illustrates, no falling action. No conclusion. I do not know what happened to my squadmates – I do not, for reasons that may be bug related, even know which of them is alive. I do not know what happens to the universe, or to the people I've saved. I do not know how I'm remembered, or if any of the terrible things mentioned above actually happens. There almost could not possibly have been less information provided regarding the ending of the game, and that is incredibly distressing when the intention was to wrap up a series that had otherwise displayed all the signs of excellency and had a fond place in our hearts.
  • edited March 2012
    The only problem with the ending is what happens after you make your choice. The choice itself is fine. The endings being differentiated largely by what color of light fills the screen is a cop-out, and the final cutscene should have shown some drastic changes based on which choice you made, showing a few consequences for the people who lived in your game and other long-term consequences for choices made throughout the trilogy. Death of the main character, destruction of the Mass Relay network, the workings of the Crucible, these things are perfectly fine. The only issue with the ending is that it doesn't show various permutations, so it doesn't feel like player choice made a powerful consequence. The ending should have done a Fallout-style checkup on various civilizations and other people.

    All the same, everything about the ending itself up to the actual choice makes sense and is actually really good and solid. The ending cutscene itself is problematic in that you choose a color of light and affect a couple other very small cosmetic changes, even with the "middle road" option which should look far more drastically different than it does, but the idea behind the ending is something I wholly support. I wonder how many people are stumbling around saying "THE ENDING SUCKS IT'S SO OBVIOUS" and agreeing with each other when their reasoning itself is drastically different from that of the next fellow over.
  • VainamoinenVainamoinen Moderator
    edited March 2012
    ...So?

    So what Shepard was always fighting for - peace and co-existence - is negated after 100+ hours of the game by a suddenly appearing, god-like creature, the literal deus ex machina. Regardless of your impressive efforts to unite the galaxy's forces in light of the threat, the creature does not want to understand that co-existence is possible. Instead, for ludicrous reasons, it pressures three choices on you to decide the galaxy's fate. The creature obviously has the power to execute every single one of these choices with a snap of its fingers, but seems unable or unwilling to take the responsibility for these choices itself. One is genocide, one is about complete enslavement and one is about a forced amalgamation of races. Your "choice" hardly matters, changes a short sequence before the credits and seems to result in the destruction of space travel either way.
  • edited March 2012
    All three endings are basically palette swap, and in the end it is a fractured tale, told by a civilisation in the dark ages?

    So it's one ending. Hell if these had been a part of a true set of endings no-one would complain.

    My hopes were

    Hope for the future - Earth and civilisation is saved,and the reapers have retreated for now. Shepard has moved from annoyance to massive problem. But Reapers are beatable, and believed in in
    Sacrifice - Civilization saved, but at least humanity fallen and Shepard dead. Reapers also retreated.
    Shot in the Dark- Loss but more knowledge added to the beacons
    Cycle Unbroken The Reapers win.

    These are all better than-

    complete destruction of civilisation, if the ending isn't in truth the last one above.

    So basically letting the reapers win is a better ending than the canon one.
  • edited March 2012
    Games don't always have bad endings, but when they do, they prefer deus ex machina.
    Stay shitty, video games.
  • edited March 2012
    The deus ex machina is a valid criticism to a degree, but the dark ending is not. At all. Author's do have the right to pen an ending.
  • edited March 2012
    Few of us minded having a deus ex-machina, a plot coupon was going to be needed, but the way it was done did not make sense. Especially considering the darkness of the endings

    If you wanted a dark ending don't give us a Deus ex-machina. let the reapers win. Much easier, and more valid.

    You didn't need the Deus ex-machina for a depressing ending. It was not necessary. You only need that for a more positive ending.
  • edited March 2012
    So what Shepard was always fighting for - peace and co-existence - is negated after 100+ hours of the game by a suddenly appearing, god-like creature, the literal deus ex machina. Regardless of your impressive efforts to unite the galaxy's forces in light of the threat, the creature will not understand that co-existence is possible. Instead, for ludicrous reasons, it pressures three choices on you to decide the galaxy's fate. One is genocide, one is about complete enslavement and one is about a forced amalgamation of races. Your choice hardly matters and seems to result in the destruction of space travel either way.
    "Literal Deus Ex Machina" is catchy, but from a structural perspective the "God Child" does not exhibit the values of a Deus Ex Machina. As you recall, the Crucible itself has been the galaxy-spanning super device that we've been building up to this point. That a VI based on the Reaper's creators is at its core doesn't really change that we've been set on a trajectory to push 2-3 buttons the entire way through.

    What does the God Child do to solve all problems that isn't explained by the previous moments? This "God Child" doesn't come out of nowhere, it is an expression of the Crucible. The Crucible is something that has existed for thousands of cycles, so Reaper Builders being at its core makes sense. You finish it by getting a fleet together, attacking the Reapers, and opening the Citadel. Everything the Illusive man has said has come down to you being able to chose between destroying the Reapers and controlling them. A Deus Ex Machina has to come out of essentially nowhere, but the VI child is the culmination of all of your efforts in the game up to this point.
  • VainamoinenVainamoinen Moderator
    edited March 2012
    DAISHI wrote: »
    The deus ex machina is a valid criticism to a degree, but the dark ending is not. At all. Author's do have the right to pen an ending.

    Dark endings are OK, of course. You have to be careful what you're throwing in here, though, and that's a basic problem in writing video game endings. The complete and miraculous victory is a stereotype, but one that renders satisfaction to the gamer who has worked more than a hundred hours towards finding a solution to the problem. In this case, the complete victory wasn't possible any more. They could have left the player with the satisfaction to have saved the universe, although at massive costs. Not the best ending from the storyteller's view, but definitely one the protagonist tried to achieve.
  • edited March 2012
    Dark endings are OK, of course. You have to be careful what you're throwing in here, though, and that's a basic problem in writing video game endings. The complete and miraculous victory is a stereotype, but one that renders satisfaction to the gamer who has worked more than a hundred hours towards finding a solution to the problem. In this case, the complete victory wasn't possible any more. They could have left the player with the satisfaction to have saved the universe, although at massive costs. Not the best ending from the storyteller's view, but definitely one the protagonist tried to achieve.
    All three endings meet the criteria for being victory at a great cost.
  • edited March 2012
    No they don;'t. All three endings are a greater defeat than just letting the reapers win.
    Civilisation utterly destroyed never to rise again?

    Reapers beaten at great cost is a valid ending. But what we got was fracture fairy tale at best.
  • edited March 2012
    No they don;'t. All three endings are a greater defeat than just letting the reapers win.
    Yes they do. All three options break the cycle.
  • edited March 2012
    You only have the catalyste i(reaper AI) word for that. Sorry can't trust him. But civilisation utterly destroyed never to rise again can be trusted due to the last ending, assuming the entirety is not just a tall tale.
  • VainamoinenVainamoinen Moderator
    edited March 2012
    A Deus Ex Machina has to come out of essentially nowhere, but the VI child is the culmination of all of your efforts in the game up to this point.

    The hero attempts to save the universe, the attempt fails, a god-like creature appears that hasn't said a word before and essentially solves the situation for the hero. That's Deus Ex Machina without a doubt. ;)

    It was of course clear from the beginning of ME3 that they were building a machine with an unknown purpose. They weren't building the god from the machine though. That one's always been there and has been orchestrating all these cycles of almost-genocide as his "solution" to preventing complete genocide (?!?).
  • edited March 2012
    You know what I really dislike about the ending? The game essentially makes you play multiplayer to get the better version since it adds so much to war assets. I hate multiplayer.
  • VainamoinenVainamoinen Moderator
    edited March 2012
    DAISHI wrote: »
    You know what I really dislike about the ending? The game essentially makes you play multiplayer to get the better version since it adds so much to war assets. I hate multiplayer.

    SECONDED. With a vengeance. It forces those mechanics into a strictly single-player game, and I hate them for it. :(

    That doesn't veil the shittyness of the endings though. ;)
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