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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The ending of Mass Effect 3 doesn't have to be some saccarine crap ending. That's a strawman. That (and the guy comparing it to sitcoms earlier, wtf) is a really false comparison. Long term series with tons of fans with years in between involve tons of speculation and expectation, and when the endings don't match, people get pissed off. The more "mainstream" the series, the more people get pissed off. For instance, every single drama series that people actually like that lasts for more than 3 years or so has a ton of people complaining about the ending outside of The Wire, The Shield, and Six Feet Under. Lost, BSG, Sopranos, etc. still have people bitching about the endings constantly on the forum, for instance. You can't compare this to a one and done game or a sitcom because its a different animal entirely. Those don't have the years and years of expectation and speculation that allows for a letdown once these things finally come to fruition. I AM NOT SIDING WITH HIM ON THE DEFENSE OF THIS PARTICULAR ENDING because I haven't even seen it yet - as I've stated before, the overall story is probably the thing that interests me least about the game - but Mass Effect is more comparable to a long-running drama than a one and done movie or game, or a short form comedy. And people's own expectations do hugely effect how they accept how something turns out, especially dealing with the, uh, "Internet video game playing demographic."
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| # ¿ Mar 13, 2012 21:29 |
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| # ¿ May 24, 2013 21:40 |
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Crustashio posted:It was so loving jarring to suddenly get a (meaningless) choice at the end of me3 when the buildup of the entire game seemed to point towards reaper destruction. I never got that. In ME1 and 2, there was no way the galaxy was going to beat the Reapers if they actually got here. The point was to keep them from coming. In 3, they came, and you were pretty much stuck having to fight them and inevitably lose and then get some alien machine out of nowhere that you HOPE will save everyone. The issue with this is that it's a pretty regular sci fi trope that weird alien machines never do what you expect. So as soon as I saw that device, I figured that it would make you into a Reaper or something, which seemed to be the overall theme since that's what Illusive Man has been trying to do since ME2. I figured it would be a choice between a Twlight Zone "you are the reapers" ending, where, a cycle later, Shepard-Reaper comes and culls the galaxy, and a "you convince the Reapers to stop the cycle" ending before I was spoiled. From what I read, it sounds like the ending has terrible execution as opposed to not fulfilling the buildup. There's nothing in the games that ever made me think you could actually destroy the Reapers as a race though. I can't comment fully until later tonight probably, since I'm just sitting at the final mission as of now.
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| # ¿ Mar 13, 2012 21:37 |
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Strange Matter posted:I don't see why it would be impossible for the combined might of every race in the galaxy to defeat the Reapers. Their main defense seems to be that they have shields powered by The Plot, since once you disabled Sovereign's shields by killing the load bearing end boss he went down pretty quickly to sustained fire from the Alliance fleet. It would probably cost the allied fleets 98% of their ships but once those defenses are gone it could happen. Codecs and such make the Reaper's weapons too powerful, and the Alliance's, even retroffited, too weak, combined with the fact that there aren't enough Alliance ships to really knock out the Reaper force as shown at the end of ME2. yes, they could put up a decent fight now, but Reapers can still cut through Alliance ships like butter, while you need sustained fleet fire to take out Reapers.
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| # ¿ Mar 13, 2012 22:29 |
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Okay, just beat it. I don't really have a problem with the basic ending; the synthesis choice seemed like the natural progression of the story (since the entire series is pretty much about uniting the races), so I chose that, and you got your final rundowns with each squad member right before that (and could call all the other ones for the same on the phone), so I didn't need anything else to that point. I mean, basically, by uniting the races in - game, you could undergo the final step in evolution and avoid extinction. The ending cinematic, though, was completely unattached. It's obvious that it was had nothing to do with the current ending, as it makes no sense at all. The epilogue with the Stargazer was kind of interesting in implication, too.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 03:45 |
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Jefferoo posted:Yeah, that's what's so insane about that ending - it literally invalidates like, every loving thing you'd been doing for like hundreds of hours. Nothing mattered - just hit a button, receive cutscene, wreck galaxy. It's so drat disgusting. I didn't wreck the galaxy; I evolved it! You guys pick the weird endings. The synthesis one does fit in with what you've been doing for three games.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 03:50 |
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ImpAtom posted:No it doesn't, because synthesis is about removing choice. Shepard forces everyone in the galaxy to become part robot for no clear reason aside from the AI Kid saying "Uh, well, this will cause peace somehow. I don't need to explain it." Not to mention it still destroys all the Mass Relays and there's no loving explanation of what it means to become part robot. Shepard is always the one to make the choices though. The first game was predicated on "you choose who lives or dies" and the choices were between a rock and a hard place. 2 kind of messed this up because it was literally possible to save everyone in it, which made a lot of people obsess about doing just that, but the roots were always Shepard making impossible choices. The logical conclusion is Shepard choosing for the entire galaxy, but still being a hard choice. Synthesis makes sense because that's the direction the galaxy was going in, anyway. The ending cinematic is what's screwed because it's obviously a pre-render that they tried to "make fit" once the ending was changed, and it doesn't really. The other choices are kind of messed up because of that, too - the change is far too obvious. Darko fucked around with this message at Mar 14, 2012 around 04:03 |
| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 04:00 |
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ImpAtom posted:The primary thing my Shepard did was give people choice. She cured the Krogans because the Krogans should get to decide their own destiny. She uplifted the Geth because the Geth are a sentient species who deserve full rights, while also helping the Quarians because assholes as they were they deserved not to have to live in a crappy ship and environment suits for eternity. So when my choice is "force people to evolve how the Reapers want," it doesn't sound like it fits with what I've been doing at all. The other endings align with the other Shepards (mostly). The problem isn't really the final choice you're given, because that's where the series came from, it's that it's disconnected from the "blow up galaxy transportation," which was obviously only thrown into the ending speech because the cinematic was already done.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 04:10 |
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ImpAtom posted:
You interfere in the Geth/Quarian war and make it end exactly the way you want it to. You interfere with the Krogans and choose exactly what you want. You choose whether the Rachni live or die. The whole war asset thing is prefaced on you making other races' choices for them. You literally choose between saving the Rachni as a race or letting Grunt's team die in the game. Or you choose to let another too-fast breeding race of idiots possibly screw up the entire galaxy. It's up to you, no matter what. Darko fucked around with this message at Mar 14, 2012 around 04:15 |
| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 04:13 |
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Jefferoo posted:I remember beating 2 first then hearing friends on Facebook complain about losing people because they couldn't pay attention to the character's dialogues and stuff to know what to assign to what, on top of not doing loyalty missions. I really think 2 nailed it, because there was a way to get everything right and save everyone, you just had to be smart and pay attention. I didn't read any guides or anything, I just got really invested in the game and got the best ending. 2 is just game design that allows people who obsess more over games to be "rewarded" for it. It's more rewarding to that type of player, but it gets away from the whole point of the series, which was giving the player the illusion of irreversible choice. Hell, in ME2, if you were sneaky enough, you could romance everyone on the entire ship. ME2 doesn't give you consequences for making a decision, it just forces you to be as thorough as possible, which doesn't imply any risk. The fact that you can be 95% renegade and 95% Paragon and the same exact people survive at the end because you were smart enough to figure out not to send soldiers into pipes isn't really what the series started off as.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 04:20 |
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The Cheshire Cat posted:
This is true, and it misses the boat on letting you agree with TIM for this reason. The Shepard that kills the counsel in ME1 SHOULD agree with humanity taking control of the Reapers logically; and TIM and Anderson should end up representing both sides of that coin. Sure, Shep would probably still kill TIM after making the choice, but it would still make sense to go in that direction as opposed to using the glowy kid for that. Basically: - Take control of the Reapers to save humanity, but possibly screw everyone else - Blow up the Reapers, possibly screw humanity But now, both choices basically have the same consequences except in one, you kill the geth and EDI.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 04:32 |
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ImpAtom posted:And yet ME3 continues it. I can save the Krogans and still get Salarians on my side. I can unite the Geth and Quarians. I can free the Rachni. I can make peace with the Batarians. Whatever you want to argue about the 'series,' it's pretty plain in this particular game that you can in fact pull off good endings that don't require rock/hard place choices. You may not like it, and that is fine, but saying it isn't what actually happens in the game is flat-out dishonest. You lose someone in 3, depending on what you do. You can't have everyone from the prior games live at once, it kind of rewrites the "save everyone" in 2. Even the stuff you're saying isn't consequence free like in 2; freeing the Rachni at least kills Grunt's crew - you can't have Mordin and Wrex alive, etc. In 2, it's all "optimal situation" from red or blue choices, no matter what outside of a couple of minor things. 3 CAN go as far as one, depending on what you did in the prior games, but even with a near perfect save like mine, you're going to end up killing people that you like due to a mix of stuff you did in 2/3.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 04:44 |
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Sivart13 posted:I expect at the very least they'll have one of their "RPS Verdict" articles once three or four of the lads have finished it. My greatest fear is that they call all the fans crybabies like most other sites have been doing. Most of the complaints I see outside of here aren't saying the endings are bad because of the same reasons most of us are saying (general disconnect), they're mad because Shepard "dies", which IS typical stupid gamer stuff.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 05:05 |
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What everyone raging against the "gaming press" would serve to remember, is that they are not responding to this thread; they're responding to the tons of comments that they're reading on their site from 12 year olds. When they're talking about "fan reaction" is mostly represented by the emails they get or the comments they see. Complaining that "those aren't the real complaints, it's really about how the endings don't match up to the buildup before (and don't make sense), are ignoring that a giant percentage of the complaints they see are literally saying the ending sucks because they want to live with space wife, and are colored by stuff they hear like people campaigning to lower Metacritic scores.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 12:41 |
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Charlie Mopps posted:So, they are lovely journalists? Shocking! No, the Games forum is not representative of the average gamer. edit: Once again, it's not saying that they are right or wrong, but we're in a bubble that they are not in and have a totally different perspective. The last glance I took at the Bioware forums, for instance, you'd have one thought out post saying how the ending doesn't match the themes of the series to multiples complaining about stupid stuff. Or a bunch of posts that just obviously latch on to anyone complaining, just to complain. I agree that the ending is bad, but that's because it seems hacked together last minute with no real regards for how it matches the rest of the series, not because you don't have a ME2 way of saving everyone and winning without question, and if you look elsewhere, a lot of people ARE complaining about the latter. Whereas we only have about 2 people here making that their primary issue. Darko fucked around with this message at Mar 14, 2012 around 12:50 |
| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 12:46 |
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DMBFan23 posted:I get what you are saying and I mostly agree, but I think this kind of equates people who want a happy ending with the people who are being unreasonable, and I don't think that's the case. The reasons for wanting at least the possibility of a happy ending have been laid out pretty rationally in this thread, whether or not anyone agrees with that position (I do). The issue is, that it gets kind of mixed in together. When you have a bunch of kids emailing/commenting with the most ridiculous hyperbole, and then a few more people with more rational arguments, the latter tend to get lost in the shuffle. The more "public" the forum for people to talk, the worse the comments tend to be, for instance, some sites still have people complaining about the gay romances. If I was going off of Gamespot or something as opposed ot these forums for reactions, I might write off the fan reaction similarly. But even with who I disagree with here, for the most part, it's a stance I sympathize with.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 13:27 |
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Dammit Who? posted:So, uh, is there a school that game developers go to where they teach you to have players choose their ending from three evenly-spaced consoles in the last thirty seconds of the game? Or does being a lazy fucker come naturally? That's just a visual choice wheel. That's not the problem.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 13:40 |
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Dammit Who? posted:If everything I did up to then was just a wet fart in a warm room and that "visual choice wheel" is the only thing that matters then it certainly is Each game ends with a choice wheel, you just walk to this one as opposed to choosing it with your cursor. The problem is the disconnect in plot, not that you're choosing the final resolution.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 13:47 |
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This game isn't any more buggy than the others, and for a game of its size, it's less buggy than most. That's not really an applicable complaint. The game's "rush" has more to do with the sneaky content cuts that a lot of people don't notice; like how only having one hub works thematically, but also cuts down development costs and times TREMENDOUSLY. At the same time, it cuts down the amount of variety in the gameplay experience. A lot of people don't even really notice this though, which means they basically got away with that much. Also, making the same result for Paragon/Renegade choices accomplishes the same in the same way with only a slight dialogue and in game animation change. But if you don't choose both in both games, which a lot of people don't, you won't even realize the difference. The branching trees are cut down a whole lot in this game, and that's where the costs were cut, not in testing.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 14:38 |
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It's not Metal Gear Solid; the ME games aren't really designed with quite that much forethought. But yeah, the "kid" sections were just a worse version of the The Sorrow fight, without adjusting the programming for the character's decisions like the aforementioned Sorrow battle.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 15:20 |
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Doctor Spaceman posted:I think there's a fair bit of content in there. My playtime at the end of the game was pretty similar to what it was at the end of ME2, and it's not padded (well, not any more than the previous games). There's content, but it's easily programmable content that has less variety. It's harder to program in-town sidequests that are triggered by conversation variables than to make a mission longer and include more set dialogue within the mission, for instance.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 15:22 |
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Nelson Mandingo posted:I actually liked this because I play the default Shepard. I prefer to not play "Shepard as me", but "I am in control of Shepard the character." I don't play as Shepard as me, but the first two games had you determine Shepard's character whereas this one doesn't. Shepard the character is the character you make him/her, until this game. Even in the total rear end in a top hat stuff that you get from screwing up the first two games that I'm seeing on Youtube, Shep is still expressing regret and such, which he/she never did in the first two games.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 15:35 |
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CJ posted:Why are all these game journos dismissing the complaints as irrational and entitlement? From my perspective, players are entitled to a satisfactory ending. You aren't just passively viewing the story, you are actively encouraged to participate and invest in the story, so saying Bioware's writers can do whatever the hell they like because it's their creative work doesn't hold up. After playing 3 games i think people have a stake in the story and a right to call bullshit on such a nonsensical ending. Because demanding that an artist change their work to match what you want is stupid, like, elementary school level stupid. Saying that it's lovely is one thing, but the whole "my entire enjoyment depends on the ending, I don't like it, change it" is how school - aged children think as opposed to anyone who has any experience with any narrative art. There's a line there that some people are crossing, and the game journos are seeing a ton of the more hyperbolic responses, just due to a mix of average readership and selective bias.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 15:39 |
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Sky Shadowing posted:People criticize art all the time, don't they? Dude, really, really bad strawman here.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 15:53 |
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CJ posted:But there is a difference between watching a film, or reading a book, or playing a Rockstar game where you just passively experience the creator's story. The game actively asks for your input on who Shepard is and what choices he is making, so i think it's a bit disingenuous when people say it's Bioware's story they can do whatever the hell they like with it. The developer in a game still determines the end user experience. Even with an amount of user choice, the experience is completely guided by the author. And each component of a game is a separate art. For instance, in my software dev company, the writers are completely separate from the designers, who are separate from the programmers, who are separate from the sound team, etc. You have producers that oversee everything and place everything together - but each component usually has set art or creative direction applied to an end user experience. It's no different than film in that regard. Whether games as a whole are an art are irrelevant to what I'm saying; it's the same with film or any other creative entertainment; it's entitlement to say "as a consumer, I don't like what you did, redo it just for me" when it comes to any non commissioned work. edit: In other words, the end user of entertainment acts like they're directly commissioning the work. That's what's being referred to. Darko fucked around with this message at Mar 14, 2012 around 16:03 |
| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 16:00 |
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ImpAtom posted:To be honest, even if I don't agree with them, I think it's a bit much to say people who complain for 'petty' reasons are entitled. Now you're shifting the goalposts though. What's being responded to are tons of people writing and literally demanding that the ending be changed as opposed to just complaining because they're not satisfied. It's like that guy strawmanning above; much of what is being responded to is not base criticism, but the overly hyperbolic reaction that a lot of gamers have. I agree that software dev does get into a bit of a grey area here because it's a mix of product development and art. People get used to asking for interactive tweaks that don't work, and those things being changed. However, this request is specifically based on an artistic element (creative writing) as opposed to a interactive one, that's where the problem lies. It's asking to change the music or the art assets in a finished game because you don't like them and not because of userability; it's unprecedented. Darko fucked around with this message at Mar 14, 2012 around 16:15 |
| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 16:10 |
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Transmetropolitan posted:I do not mean to be rude, but entitlement issues arise before or during the work rather than afterwards - a great example would be Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" in which he begins to talk about artistic critique and how, when and why the audience is damaging to an author's work. He said that Chaucer could only do what he did because everybody in England only cared about the French, and thus he was free to work as he pleased. That didn't mean that his work would not be put to critique after being ready, which is the drat problem here. Entitlement comes up after a work is completed as well, when the consumer then feels like they "own" that work because they grow attached to the characters/narrative. This starts popping up more in serialized works which are less Chaucer and more Doyle, where, when people don't agree with the fate of the character, they demand that it be changed. The most famous modern pop culture comparison/example would be Wilkes in Misery who forces Paul Sheldon to resurrect Misery, and then forces him to rewrite said resurrection when she calls it out for being narrative crap. At best, when it comes to the writing aspect of a game, it's still a Choose Your Own Adventure book when it comes to user interaction with the actual narrative. If you have any traditional narration in the game, the user will be removed from it at those times. You either have to tell a story in a completely different way (which is possible, but not what games like Mass Effect do), or the standard rules of writing apply to those sections in general, and the player is pretty much forced to be a spectator, with their in-game actions being rewarded with further uncovering a new piece of spectacle.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 16:27 |
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ImpAtom posted:And I am saying that, even if I don't agree with them, I don't think those people are wrong to ask. You talk about how this is an 'artistic element' instead of an interactive one while ignoring that the two are intertwined. People are not playing the game to see (x batch of writer's) Commander Shepard. They are doing it to see their own. The creative and interactive parts are meshed and that makes it very different from complaining about the end to Lost or The Dark Tower or anything that is fundamentally passive. As my post above says, the plot of those games is still removed from user interaction. It's very much literally a Choose your Own Adventure book when it comes to that, and is as interactive as those. The (creative) writing aligns under aesthetics as opposed to interactivity. quote:No it isn't. In fact, it's happened on multiple occasions. I mean, we don't need to bring up Fallout 3 again, do we? Or Prince of Persia 2006? It's up to a company to go to whatever lengths they want to to appease their consumers, but this still does not change how said consumers come off with their complaints. When you're talking about narratives and styles and aesthetic choices (and not usability issues), yes, it's exactly the same as saying "Stephen King the end of the Dark Tower sucks, rewrite it." And yes, while some authors do end up revising and changing things over time, it doesn't make hyperbolic demands any less trite in themselves, which is being addressed. Like I said, most of this forum hasn't been doing that to the level of the rest of the Internet, and instead are giving definite criticisms, which are more constructive. But in game development and journalism, you see far more of the Anne Wilkes types that most posters here aren't relating what the response is to.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 16:35 |
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Korlac posted:I'm not understanding your stance. Are you saying that Bioware doesn't have to answer to the community because the community doesn't own the IP? Because if so, I completely agree with that. Or are you saying that because a vocal portion of the community is making a strawman fallacy with their argument, that then under minds the actual problems that are present with the ending? If that's the case, then I disagree with you. People were misrepresenting (some) journalistic responses of criticizing gamers demanding to change the ending as a) misrepresenting gamers' responses or b) saying gamers can't criticize. The initial response to that is that those journalists are getting the bulk of 'entitled' gamer comments and emails that are irrationally hyperbolic, and that's what's coloring their editorials as opposed to the ones that are actually constructive criticism. And that's what a lot of people are missing. When I make games, half of my emails are from people telling me what I have to do in my game to please them personally, with really demanding attitudes. it's really different from most of the back and forth you see on forums like this. This all started a side discussion about what game companies "owe" their consumers and the differentiation from the "art" and "product" sides of games software. Typically, in software, you fix usability issues based on customer feedback, and address general criticism (of this relative level) in future software. What people are complaining about is on the art end, and not the programming usability end, and go outside that type of spec. it's more analogous to films, etc.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 18:13 |
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RMcC3D posted:As a game developer myself, I'm dying to know what the atmosphere at BioWare Edmonton is like right now. Most game developers I've worked with care about their/our games even more than players do. With a project that big, though, there's a lot of disconnect. The team gets too compartmentalized - it's not the same as an indie title or a smaller title where the 1-6 people working on the game are involved in every aspect. You've got one guy that has been modeling rocks and trees for months, another that has been coding the netcode, etc. And it looks good on your resume, no matter what, and you're happy it's getting overall good feedback. Unless you're in the team directly responsible for the section people are complaining about, you don't really take it personally. The only people taking a hit right now are the ones that approved/thought they were writing an amazing philosophical choice in their ending and were expecting gamers to be praising it/discussing the implications in a positive fashion, instead saying it's total poo poo.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 18:21 |
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Players spend 40-60 hours playing; we spend months or years developing.
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General Battuta posted:According to a post in this very thread even the testing directors are really upset, so I'm not sure you're right. If that's the case, it sounds like there was some internal disagreement over game direction. ie. someone popped in and hosed everything up against everyone's wishes, and now they feel it reflects on everyone else personally.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 18:24 |
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Korlac posted:Once again you make the strawman argument that because it's art the it shouldn't be subjected to the same level of criticism. You even go so far as to say there's a difference between the "art" and the "product." But this is invalid because in this case the art is the product. We didn't buy the game for it's combat mechanics (there are far better out there). We bought the game for it's story and characters, and the players are not satisfied with how those were handled at the end. Therefore, they are unhappy with the product. "Strawman" means you're making up your own argument to argue against as opposed to actually arguing against what people are talking about. So, for instance, when no one in the thread or most of the gaming press says "you can't be critical about the ending" and you make a whole post complaining about people saying that, that's a strawman. Strawman does not mean 'statement that you don't think is right.' There is a difference between consumer aesthetic "like" or "dislike" and actually issues where the usability of software doesn't work as intended. That's not 'invalid' - they are specced completely different and approached completely different by any developer. The creative sides are a different animal than product usability. That's what makes games unique - they marry both, whereas most things are either one or the other. My statements earlier were that a lot of gamers were approaching the art side as if it was the usability side, and making demands based on that mindset. Darko fucked around with this message at Mar 14, 2012 around 18:41 |
| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 18:39 |
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Transmetropolitan posted:I am not familiar with the internals of game development, but shouldn't the lead designer be the main man to deal with that kind of crap? As Thwomp said, it could have been one of those things where only certain people had access to that part of the game. ie. if you have a minor film role, you only get the part of the script relevant to the scenes you're in. Even on really large projects here, I only tend to see the parts of the script that are relevant to what i am actually working on. That would create a situation where someone could make a decision on their own that isn't second guessed, even if it messes up everything else. If what people are saying is correct, the lead writer probably made a decision on his own that was approved higher up. As opposed to a decision made by the entire writing team, with checks and balances applied. The difference between a producer and the writing team is that the writing team would be more intimately familiar with how everything connects as compared to the producer. You do get mad when one guy with grand ideas comes in and messes everything up, and you know it's happening (because the rest of the team DOES talk about stuff like this internally), and it being pointed out by the consumer is normally even more maddening.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 18:51 |
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I actually kind of forgot about Kai Leng, but have most of the same criticisms. He was presented as some kind of space badass ninja, shows up, and gets his rear end kicked by me, and almost losing to a dying old man before that. I wasn't sure WHAT he was supposed to be, but threatening antagonist, he wasn't. Even the "loss" fight was because he got a spaceship protecting him while he got his shields back.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 19:23 |
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Thwomp posted:The more I think about it, the more brilliant it would've been had KL been the person you got killed on Virmire. It would've totally changed the outlook on the character but KL is already a guy taken in by Cerberus and enhanced (supposedly beyond Shepard). When they showed that shadowy figure by TIM at the very beginning of the game, I was sure it was one of the few forced in-game deaths, come back to haunt me. Kai Leng stood out to me as being weird and out of place, and also, whoever that random dude is in the final assault that shows up like he's important that I've never seen before. I forgot his name; I think he first shows when you first see Anderson; I assumed he was a stand-in or something, but nobody non-forced died on my playthrough, either.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 19:31 |
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thefncrow posted:But having now seen that ending, I have to reluctantly say I agree. Not because "MY IMMERSION", but because Bioware has made a game that, for 99% of its experience, is a fantastic game that's absolutely worth playing, but the other 1% of the experience is so awful and ruinous that it colors everything that came before. Bioware owes it not to me, but to themselves, to fix the game so that the game can be remembered fondly for the things it did right, and not for the total narrative failure that is the abysmal ending. This is what throws me off, because the ending isn't the worst part of the game to me. The combat is better than ME1 and 2, but every other aspect of the gameplay outside of boring planet exploring/scanning is worse because of how much they trimmed.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 19:33 |
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thefncrow posted:I think the ending is bar none the single worst thing about ME3. I didn't care much about the overarching plot, so the destination meant very little to me. What I did like in ME were the little vignettes or how over the top many of the choices were. So for me, the ending is more like "well that wasn't realized very well," whereas my actual complaints are about, say, not having any "real" Renegade choices, or no random silly missions or choices right in the middle of a NPC area. I mean, hell, do you ever even play two people against each other in the entire game? In ME1 you had to choose, multiple times between betraying someone or siding with someone else, whereas I only recall that once, with Mordin, in this game, mid mission as opposed to NPCs. That stands out far more than 'ending" to me.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 19:48 |
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oxford_town posted:Oh no, I know that. I had the option to continue things with Ashley (my LI in 1), so I took all the positive dialogue options whilst she was in the hospital. I then met with Jack, agreed to continue things with her, and got the Paramour achievement. But Ashley never took me up on the sweet, sweet lies I had fed her earlier in the game, and the game treated us as just friends from then on despite that fact that she should really think that Shep is still interested. Whoever you agree to romance immediately goes on the com and puts out a universe-wide announcement saying "Shepard and I are in love!"
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 20:31 |
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Preechr posted:Didn't Conrad have a wife, or was that some poo poo he made up to sound like he wasn't a total fuckup? He admits he made it up and has a shrine to Shepard in ME3 if you didn't get him killed in 2.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 20:36 |
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From what I recall, the main key is rewriting the Geth or not, but if you make the "wrong" move there, you can still get the peace if you do everything else in ME2 and 3 up to that point in the maximum way regarding Tali/Legion. I Renegaded to win her trial and their little argument, did all the side missions, regarding them, etc. and was able to make peace.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 20:43 |
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| # ¿ May 24, 2013 21:40 |
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I just remembered, the worst part of ME3 was getting a rescue mission from that Elcor to go to the Elcor planet and rescue his people, expecting to see Elcor with cannons on their backs, and instead it just being a planet scan. I would have forgiven Bioware for not having an Elcor/Hanar squadmember, but teasing me like that was, hands down, the worst part of the game for me.
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| # ¿ Mar 14, 2012 20:51 |
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