Aug.... and you all want to say Mass Effect 3's ending was bad. (Deus Ex Spoilers)

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Anyway, why's the IT dead? Because I'm yet to hear anyone explain why Shepard clutches his head, hears Reaper noises, and sees big black lines at the side of the screen whilst the whole thing distorts when he's talking to TIM and Anderson.

I told you, I wish it wasn't. But something tells me they're not going in that direction. Casey Hudson is a moron. We'll see in 2 days. I want to be wrong in this case, because it's the only way they can salvage the game in my opinion.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Its not much different to the end of the original deus ex, in that you are given an ultimatum that is separate (but still relative) from all other choices made up to that point. The only difference being that you don't have to complete some brief arbitrary mission just to get the ending you want.

HR wasn't perfect, but it didn't do anything unexpected. A bit flat yeah, but not overtly so to break down how the rest of the game felt.

ME3 was built on choice and consequence to a MUCH greater degree and over the course of a trilogy (where plot points affect future games), and then dropped it right at the end. Deus Ex HR stood on its own, compliments its predecessor (whats an "Invisible War"?) and doesn't necessarily compromise its initial goals, short of the Boss sequences.

Captcha: spitting feathers... is this some sort of idiom I've never heard of?

 

[Aprilgold]

Human Revolution was a prequel to an already established game.

Can't exactly have any major differences in the endings without affecting the timeline.

It could have been better, agreed, but it ain't ME3 levels of terrible.

Shouldn't of even offered choice then. Should of just gave us a straight proper ending.

Now it kinda seems like a cop out, like they went with the choices just so they didn't annoy anyone that didn't agree with their message.

I didn't think Human Revolution's was bad at all, it was at least interesting enough and explained what happened after your choice once you made it. And the thing is, it was no where near as lazy as Mass Effects 3's which essentially gave you a different color explosion depending on your choice.

I can imagine Eidos was in a rock-and-a-hard-place in the sense that they had to either build a ending that would fit with the lore and give a choice or create a cop-out ending that barely fits with the lore but gives choices.

Overall, Deus Ex put together a good or decent ending that was the best of two options and Mass Effect 3 wasted 90 hours of people's time with its bullshit, bad button-choice ending. A,B,C or D endings can be good, its just that everyone was expecting better from Mass Effect 3.

 

[DEAD34345]

Human Revolution had an ending, perhaps not a great ending, but the key conflicts involved in the plot were resolved. Mass Effect had a never-before-mentioned AI god arrive, suddenly create an entirely new conflict that was barely related to the rest of the story at all, and then offer to fix it by using their space magic god powers to make a coloured explosion. It's like the ending came from a completely different game or something.

If Human Revolution had the same kind of ending as Mass Effect, it would turn out that Eliza Cassan was installed in Jensen's arm, somehow giving him the power to stop world war 3. Then you would get to choose an ending from the following:

Disable all the augmentations and thus prevent world war 3, but also everyone in New York dies for some reason. Also you die, unless you've played enough multiplayer matches.

Gain control of everyone's augmentations to be used for whatever purpose you like, including trying to prevent World War 3. Also you die.

Fuse everyone with the augmentations. Also you die.

Mass Effect's ending was not merely "bad", it failed on every possible level, including basic logic and common sense. The Human Revolution could be called a bad ending (I thought it was acceptable but not spectacular myself), but it's nowhere near as unbelievably awful as the Mass Effect ending.

 

[Dryk]

Human Revolution is a debate. All of it. The entire game. You're constantly hit, at multiple levels, with contrasting opinions and results of human augmentation. The ending is your opinion. That's why it's a choice. Because the game is asking you to come to a conclusion on your own ideas and philosophies. (Notice that there's even an 'abstain' option.)

Funnily enough, I ended up making my choice on different grounds than it wanted me to.

The choices to me came down to: Coverup, smaller coverup, get augmentation banned, kill a whole bunch of people.

I ended up getting augmentation banned... I didn't want to... I suppose that's the point 'ey? "You want this world. This is the price"

 

[Biodeamon]

I guess you could say...
*puts on futuristic sunglasses*
you didn't ask for that.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

 

[smartalec]

'I just wish DE:HR ending showed us what happened with the characters after I made the choice.'

They're irrelevant.

Deus Ex 1 was a big debate, too. And it still showed us what impact our decisions had. It didn't just offer us a debate, it gave us the casting vote in that debate. The result was a fondly-remembered ending for most people, and that's probably one of the reasons the game is still fondly-remembered today.

Was DE1 wrong to do that, then? Did doing that detract from the debate, at all? I don't think it did.

The reason the debate mattered to me was because the characters, story etc had gotten me immersed in the debate. It no longer felt abstract to me, it was a real question, not hypothetical. The characters and the story resolution was not irrelevant, to me. They were the reason I felt I had to make the choice.

If anything, I feel that not giving us that sort of resolution hurt the overall impact of what the game was trying to tell us.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I liked it because I felt like by telling the truth I was getting revenge on everyone that had messed Adam around.

It was nice to get a message about playing pacifist too Was a nice reward.

 

[Woodsey]

'I just wish DE:HR ending showed us what happened with the characters after I made the choice.'

They're irrelevant.

Deus Ex 1 was a big debate, too. And it still showed us what impact our decisions had. It didn't just offer us a debate, it gave us the casting vote in that debate. The result was a fondly-remembered ending for most people, and that's probably one of the reasons the game is still fondly-remembered today.

Was DE1 wrong to do that, then? Did doing that detract from the debate, at all? I don't think it did.

The reason the debate mattered to me was because the characters, story etc had gotten me immersed in the debate. It no longer felt abstract to me, it was a real question, not hypothetical. The characters and the story resolution was not irrelevant, to me. They were the reason I felt I had to make the choice.

Yeah, and DX did not have a set future. Human Revolution does. And HR does give you the casting vote. But whether that casting vote ultimately affects anything or not is not what's really important.

Likewise, you can still make your choice based on characters. I made mine, in part, due to Sarif. But the point is that it shifts - the onus is all on Adam, and it then comes back to one of the game's central ideas (which it zeroes in more on throughout the game than the original) of whether he is more or less than human. The original DX had tension between old augs and the new nano-augs, but Human Revolution is far more focused in what it wants to discuss.

It's not abstract in HR either. It's all over the place, at multiple levels, beamed from multiple characters.

And don't cut off my quote after two words if the following sentence is completely related to what you want to talk about. Like I said, they're very much irrelevant in that their individual futures don't matter - which is what I was responding to.

 

[The_Lost_King]

I'd actually be prepared to cut ME3 more slack, oddly enough. The ME folks really wrote themselves into a corner. Stupid, but... yeah, I can see how ME3 might have been difficult to end.

They didn't have to tell us why the Reapers invade. that would have totally circumvented the star child issue. The crucible could have just gone off killing every reaper and in a cut scene Shepard and love interest/most used character are standing together and the other says,"I wonder why the Reapers do this" Shepard replies," I guess we will never know but we finally know peace" cut to epic music and credits.

OT: No Human revolution's ending made sense and didn't have plot holes that you could fit 10 earths in. plus no exposition dump in the last 5 minutes. and it fit with the story, and did a better endingtron 5,000 than mass effect 3's. How is DE:HR's ending worse? at all? really?

 

[Mr_Terrific]

Started my Shepard way back in 2008. We're talking hundreds of hours of gameplay, and multiple play throughs over the course of 3 games.

I spent something like 40 hours on Deus Ex HR, and the last 20 were trophy clean up. It's not that big a deal that the ending sucked...

 

[Dendio]

Some things bothered me about deus ex, but I flat out care more about mass effect.

I didn't like how adam's love interest was handled. She cheated on him, betrayed him and used him. By the end of the game I was face palming when Jensen continued to have feelings for her. I really wanted an option to kill her there and now. At least get some revenge. Maybe a romance with malak? Or that undercover cop from detroit? The characters were not as fleshed out as bioware games and it showed.

The ending felt incomplete, but everything was so dark and hopeless that I was content to just leave well enough alone, close the book and go engage myself in something with a little more hope behind it.

Why replay deus ex, when I know nothing I do will matter in the end. Adam gets used and abused and then can press 1-4 buttons and die.

I care more about mass effect, 3 games in the making and all 3 being excellent. The characters are more interesting and the relationships with them are solid and forged over the years. Shepard can do way more with his cast than jensen.

 

[smartalec]

The original DX had tension between old augs and the new nano-augs, but Human Revolution is far more focused in what it wants to discuss.

I'll quote or not quote whatever I want to keep things concise. I saw what your point was, I don't need to repeat everything you said. I just didn't agree. Even within the framework of DX:HR needing to lead into DX1, there's a lot of room for explaining how it happens. If you think that the debate was the only point of DX:HR, then I say it forgot it was a game, not a Humanities thesis.

 

[Woodsey]

The original DX had tension between old augs and the new nano-augs, but Human Revolution is far more focused in what it wants to discuss.

I'll quote or not quote whatever I want to keep things concise. I saw what your point was, I don't need to repeat everything you said. I just didn't agree. Even within the framework of DX:HR needing to lead into DX1, there's a lot of room for explaining how it happens. If you think that the debate was the only point of DX:HR, then I say it forgot it was a game, not a Humanities thesis.

That... makes no fucking sense. All you're arguing in response is that it should have also told us how things got to where they were in the first more explicitly. That doesn't mean it forgot it was a game because it delivers a debate via the medium.

If you introduce what actually happens at the end then you begin to colour people's opinions of what they chose. And since we know what happens anyway, it meant they could avoid any chance of that - legitimately.

 

[sunsetspawn]

Spiritually, closer to Deus Ex than Deus Ex: Invisible War. That's what was claimed by the team. Why then, are augmentations no choice at all, just like in DE:IW? Hobson's choice was what PCG called it, and how appropriate.

A lot of people give IW shit and haven't even played it, or don't remember it correctly because it wasn't as complex as DE. In IW you have 5 aug slots and for each you have a choice of three augs, and each aug can be upgraded to level 3. There are a lot of permutations there and it forces you to specialize, whereas in HR after one playthrough you've experienced everything.

Also, in IW you didn't end up experience farming.


Oh, and to contribute to the topic at hand...

HR good

ME3 garbage

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I like what you have to say Woodsey. You make some very good points on videogames in general, but I still don't agree with you on Deus Ex HR.

(I'm using the royal we here)

As we saw Adam grow as a character we also his relationships expand. If you follow the questlines, he and Prichard grow to begrudgingly respect each other, Malik sees him as more than a corporate soldier and as a friend, you see Adam's frustration at being used rather than being seen as a person who wants the truth. By the end of this, I WANTED to know what would happen between him and Megan, something I hardly cared about at the beginning, I wanted to know how he had affected those people. To me they mattered as much as the future of human-augmentation.

I feel just because it's a debate doesn't mean it can't also be a character driven story. You are free to disagree.


But regardless, to address the OP's issue.

Deus Ex created a debate and discussed the future of humanity, the endings acknowledge this despite not resolving the characters.

Mass Effect created an in-depth and complex world, the endings DON'T acknowledge the consequences you had on the world and also render your choices null and ignores the fate of Shepard's allies other than "being stuck on a planet."

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

Mass Effect 3 was the end of a trilogy.

Human Revolution was not.

This.
Deus Ex Human Revoulution was a one off story with a connection to a franchise. The ending was never going to be ground breaking, as it was a prequel, and they couldn't go in detail to any of the endings because it would have fucked up the cannon.
Adam Jensen was a first/ Last time appearing character, and there wasn't an emotional connection to him. People were less outraged by his unfortunate end because they didn't have time to get to know him.

In contrast, Mass effect 3 was the culmination of everything the fans had been waiting for. The ending was dissapointing because it was, like Deus Ex's, Formulaic, samey and provide no contrast. But it was more massively effected and received because there was no reason for it to be like that. They could have done what they wanted with the end, any end, and they didn't have to worry about any previous future cannon.
Commander Shepard is a character that appeared many times before, and was designed to make an intense emotional connection between player and character. Speaking from personal experience, Players wanted to see what would happen to their shep, and how his or her story would end. With mass effect 3's ending, no choice made provided closure, or any answer to what happened to him/her.

That's why there wasn't anger about it.

 

[KingHodor]

It's much better because it had build-up. It's still not great, but I didn't really have a problem with it. The fact that you get to debate it with people whose perspectives you can understand is a plus. I loved that final talk with Hugh Darrow.

Having Eliza Cassan there at the end dragged it down most, I guess. I wasn't a fan of that character.

Funny. Once I arrived at an empty news station, I automatically thought "She's gonna be a robot."

Yep. #IOutwitsPlot?

I (and probably a lot of other fans out there) had that figured out when she first appeared in previews - the name Eliza is an obvious reference to an early attempt at a computer program pretending to be a human.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA