Confesion of a non-player about Mass Effect 3 (spoiler free)

[Gennadios]

So here lies the problem. If Bioware wanted to have a large amount of fans to notice the ending details then why would they alienate them so much to the point of having no fans but newcomers, playing the game and declaring that its ending sucks because obviously they havent been previously exposed to the kind of information that a fan would have? The way i see that most people complain about the ending makes me believe that they were newcomers (like me even if don't play) who complaining CONSTANTLY without being absolutely clear except for very few exceptions. A demographic that wouldn't have appeared if they hadn't dumbed down ME3 and tried to appeal as many people as possible, things that made your fanbase leave the sinking ship before even reaching the endings.

The result is an ending that nobody gets what is the deal about it because its meaning isn't for the new people, its for the fanbase that is no longer there for being alienated of the idea of having their "perfect" game being played by the evils of *!GASP!* CASUALS!!!

I think you're giving the writers waaaaaaay too much credit. They're not that sly or smart or whatever the appropriate word would be.

Indoctrination theory and the attention to detail part is pretty much the fanbase grasping at straws. They'll latch on to any detail that seems to match the established game fiction and try to weave a narrative that matches established fiction.

The existing details I can actually see sufficing for new players. Why? Because a new player to the series doesn't have any precedent or expectation. Sure there's some kind of god child that controls everything.

Returning players or fans of the series? The problem is that the ending in no way matches the established theme. we've been playing a scifi game 99% of our experience and then get blasted with space magic and a full shift into science fantasy territory. Of course the majority of the fanbase would rather believe this is some kind of a fever dream.

 

[Zhukov]

I'll let Hitler explain it because I have been dying to post this video.

I declare this video utterly hilarious. Also, right on the nose.

Although I can't help wondering how ridiculous it would be to someone who understands German.

 

[Eddie the head]

It's funny to see people rage so hard over a game that I find so laughably badly written. Less so than the second game, but still.

Umm. Why? Just saying something is badly written seams like a lazy response. Why is it badly written? It's like if I said "I like cats" and you say "I think cats suck." Ok why?

 

[Eddie the head]

It's funny to see people rage so hard over a game that I find so laughably badly written. Less so than the second game, but still.

Umm. Why? Just saying something is badly written seams like a lazy response. Why is it badly written? It's like if I said "I like cats" and you say "I think cats suck." Ok why?

ME1: Slow reveal of things, nothing gets shoved in your face without you having a choice, good pacing, becoming spectre is rewarding, wrex dialogue, steering garrus' alignment. Realistic setting, exploring the galaxy. Resolving conflicts, choosing sides. Saren was a good motivated antagonist. Vigil dialogue, perfect ending and credits song.

ME2: You die in the first cinematic and it has no repercussions troughout the game, no more answering to the council, no more actual conflict between shepard and anyone else(except kaidan/ashley but there shepard can't do anything but say ok in 3 different ways). Which is surprising given that you're with a terrorist organization that slaps it's logo on everything in a stolen ship design that just goes everywhere openly not hiding anything. No antagonist and the collectors were copy pasted geth with different looks. Unique music replaced with orchestral music like every other game/movie.

Well at least you have your reasons I don't particularly agree with them but at least you didn't say because.

 

[Coreless]

It's funny to see people rage so hard over a game that I find so laughably badly written. Less so than the second game, but still.

Umm. Why? Just saying something is badly written seams like a lazy response. Why is it badly written? It's like if I said "I like cats" and you say "I think cats suck." Ok why?

ME1: Slow reveal of things, nothing gets shoved in your face without you having a choice, good pacing, becoming spectre is rewarding, wrex dialogue, steering garrus' alignment. Realistic setting, exploring the galaxy. Resolving conflicts, choosing sides. Saren was a good motivated antagonist. Vigil dialogue, perfect ending and credits song.

ME2: You die in the first cinematic and it has no repercussions troughout the game, no more answering to the council, no more actual conflict between shepard and anyone else(except kaidan/ashley but there shepard can't do anything but say ok in 3 different ways). Which is surprising given that you're with a terrorist organization that slaps it's logo on everything in a stolen ship design that just goes everywhere openly not hiding anything. No antagonist and the collectors were copy pasted geth with different looks. Unique music replaced with orchestral music like every other game/movie.

1). "You die in the first cinematic and it has no repercussions throughout the game."

True, but then again everyone thinks shepard just saved their lives by stopping sovereign from opening the flood gates so why does the game need to have repercussions for you being dead? Your still getting funded by cerberus so even if everyone didn't trust you, the illusive man needs you and as much as shepard doesn't want to work for cerberus you know its the only way to get at the reaper threat. Its possible that if you had started doing operations in council space they may have stripped your spectre status and sent a fleet after you to arrest you.

2)."No more answering to the council, no more conflict between shepard and anyone else except kaidan/ashley but there shepard can't do anything but say ok in 3 different ways). Which is surprising given that you're with a terrorist organization that slaps it's logo on everything in a stolen ship design that just goes everywhere openly not hiding anything."

The council gives you back your spectre status as long as you operate in the terminus systems which is outside council space, and all of the events in the game happen outside council space so why should they care when the incident was resolved two years ago? They trust shepard because he has earned their trust to be given the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he is doing. Even with that said, you still aren't in good terms with the council or the alliance. There is plenty of conflict with cerberus throughout the game like for instance when the illusive men intentionally sends you into an ambush. There is also conflict with characters on their loyalty missions...and depending on how they play out you may or may not even gain their loyalty.

3)."No antagonist and the collectors were copy pasted geth with different look".

No Antagonist? how about the reapers? Harbinger was in direct control over the collector operations, who were spreading viruses on omega and kidnapping hundreds of thousands of humans to create a new reaper. Not to mention they destroyed your ship (payback is a *****) and later in the game they took your crew right out from under you. You also have the illusive man who you know is shady as hell but you can't really do anything about because the collectors and the reapers are more important.

The Geth and the Collectors were both pawns of the reapers, so in essence they are similar as an enemy, but their backgrounds and motivations are entirely different. Which Legion really gets in depth with if listen to all of his dialogue.

 

[DioWallachia]

I think you're giving the writers waaaaaaay too much credit. They're not that sly or smart or whatever the appropriate word would be.

Indoctrination theory and the attention to detail part is pretty much the fanbase grasping at straws. They'll latch on to any detail that seems to match the established game fiction and try to weave a narrative that matches established fiction.

The existing details I can actually see sufficing for new players. Why? Because a new player to the series doesn't have any precedent or expectation. Sure there's some kind of god child that controls everything.

Returning players or fans of the series? The problem is that the ending in no way matches the established theme. we've been playing a scifi game 99% of our experience and then get blasted with space magic and a full shift into science fantasy territory. Of course the majority of the fanbase would rather believe this is some kind of a fever dream.

They are grasping on straws? latch on to any details? are you telling me that there was never a case before on any medium (movies/games/books) where the lore actually explains recent events on an universe? or events that fuck over the head of both the audience and the main character?

I believe that a game is just as smart as you allow it to be, and since people always crave for better writing on games then why when the opportunity arises they all cry "it sucks" without even thinking about it. What if the games that once sucked actually made sense all this time and we were so spoiled on having the answers in our faces that we just moved on like if everything was resolved?

And about not having the capability to make choices until the end, why is this a bad thing? I mean, what i believe they were trying to do here is the Lovecraft or Nihilistic approach, to show that when you are facing a godlike entity the only way you could win is if the god feels like it. He is ALLOWING you to choose, he is not being forced into anything, why would a human be a treat to a god?

You are the human that united a whole galaxy? so what?

The endings feels "off" because most of the information we receive as an audience is a give away that all its an illusion; The camera shows the Harbringer leaving off but the next scene is Shepard waking up and his face was looking at the floor so he couldnt have seen that piece of information. That and many others like the Reaper eyes on Shepard that WE see on 2 endings; We know that, not Shepard.

 

[DioWallachia]

SNIP

Are you assuming that most of the people that complain about the ending are newcomers to the series?

Feels like it. With all the crap that Bioware put in the past (and EA) with the dumbing down of Dragon Age 2 + the Gears of Effect-ification of the combat en ME3 + the Day 1 DLC it feels like there are no fans left when the show started.
But more importantly, the ending seem deliberately off to anyone but the fans who would have pay attention to the details on the indoctrination subject; Unless the so called "fans" actually were on the game to bang as many chicks as they can and only complained about the lack of happy ending because for them a happy ending is......USING SPACE MAGIC TO TRANSFORM EVERY FEMALE IN THE GALAXY INTO VERY HOT HUMANOID SHAPED BODIES AND BRANWASH THEM INTO A MASSIVE ORGY FOR COMMANDER "THE MAN" SHEPPARD!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I played a Femshep and I still wanted a Galaxy wide orgy

FemShep is the MANLIEST woman ever and a galactic lesbian threesome is what everyone wanted

 

[Marcus Kehoe]

Well while the in doctrine theory is possible, I want a complete game.

I have been a fan since the first mass effect and have easily played a combined 300 hours of the first 2 and loved them. Mass effect 3 was good, but the ending was really bad.

The ending gave little closure, and for a game's series who's total game-play worth is easily 100 hour's why give an ending to a trilogy that leaves so many damn questions.

 

[DioWallachia]

SNIP

So you think that the Reapers wont be smart enough to pull the same indoctrination tactic on Shepard specially now with all the influence he has? This was also build up and explained in details with previous people that have been indoctrinated and would have been even MORE wallbangerish if they didnt try their best card against Shep.

And the Space Opera genre, why cant it go beyond that? why cant it grown a beard and become something different? ever heard of a Deconstruction?

And there is that problem that the choices didnt matter in the end, so what? Shep made good choices to make the entire galaxy join into fighting the Reapers but what if the choices never mattered to begin with? In the real world we make choices everyday that may seem like grandiose decisions but in the great scale of things or a godlike perspective they dont matter at all

 

[Formica Archonis]

Yes i haven't play Mass Effect of any related thing to that series..

I played through a bit of the first one, hated the gameplay, never looked at it again.

But I watched the notorious endings and thought it was stupid. (I lie: I thought the Youtube user was trolling me, so I watched them again elsewhere.) I don't buy the indoctrination theory, for what part of it I understand. It seems to hinge on Bioware knowing they'd anger a large portion of their fanbase and possibly trying to profit off DLC extra endings. As far as I can tell, it requires a level of evil and stupid I just can't buy, even coming from part of the EA Borg Cube.

It just seemed like the bad writing I expect of game endings written under a tight deadline. But apparently that makes me a fanboy. Or ignorant. Or something.

 

[Therumancer]

SNIP

So you think that the Reapers wont be smart enough to pull the same indoctrination tactic on Shepard specially now with all the influence he has? This was also build up and explained in details with previous people that have been indoctrinated and would have been even MORE wallbangerish if they didnt try their best card against Shep.

And the Space Opera genre, why cant it go beyond that? why cant it grown a beard and become something different? ever heard of a Deconstruction?

And there is that problem that the choices didnt matter in the end, so what? Shep made good choices to make the entire galaxy join into fighting the Reapers but what if the choices never mattered to begin with? In the real world we make choices everyday that may seem like grandiose decisions but in the great scale of things or a godlike perspective they dont matter at all

Indoctrination is something that is defined as working primarily on the unsuspecting and takes a substantial amount of time. Shepard's exposure to Reaper tech has been minimal when you get down to it, and what's more he knows what it is unlike most people that come into contact with it.

Guys like Saren fell prey largely due to having know idea that it even existed, The Illusive Man intentionally injected himself with the technology. Indoctrination is not a mind control attack so to speak, nor is it perfect since if you learn your indoctrinated you CAN resist it as both Saren and The Illusive Man demonstrated.

At the end of the game Shepard is in The Citadel, which does not have those kinds of properties (or else this would have been over long ago) so there is really nothing to indoctrinate him, nor is there time to do it especially seeing as he's aware. This is one of the big problems with indoctrination theory.

Likewise, as some people have pointed out The Illusive Man's mind control powers are complete BS intended for the point of the cinematics. To put things into perspective if you got that from being Indoctrinated, Saren would have had it and used it, and that would have changed the entire ME1 scenario and final confrontation.

Basically a lot of stuff was just pulled out of Bioware's anus in that ending.

If say Shepard's teleportaion was intercepted by Harbinger, and he was locked in a cell for six months while the Reaper tried to indoctrinate him, then yeah... maybe it might work. But that's not what happened. Ditto if he had the same kind of procedure as The Illusive Man (showed in the videos on the Cerberus base) which is how they got him, instead of preparing himself to control them, they got control of him.

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As far as Space Opera "changing" it already has, there are plenty of dark science fantasy stories where exactly the kind of ending your looking at there makes sense and would work. The thing is that "Mass Effect" was already defined thematically and that ending does not work within the kind of story it is. That's not growing up, that's just bad writing in this case. People bought this series because they WANTED a high fantasy space opera, and that is what it was being sold as.

If Bioware was to actually produce a low fantasy space opera, with a lot of musing over the nature of reality and how there are no perfect solutions, then an ending like this might work, especially if it was fairly surreal to begin with (like say Echo Night). That's not what this is about though, this is about a bigger than life hero who winds up resolving those problems without perfect solutions in a perfect fashion.