Dragon Age Origins Lead Designer speaks out against ME3 Ending
- Thread starter endtherapture
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You know why it was great? Because there was still hope. I could sacrifice my best friend, sacrifice myself to kill the evil in the land?Hyper-space said:
There was also closure. I got told what each of my companions were doing and how the decisions I've made played out. I was expected that from ME3.
What I got was a god machine in which everything you've fought for in the past 3 games is destroyed or changed beyond all recognition so effectively the universe doesn't exist anymore. It wasn't uplifting, it was depressing, and completely out of the blue. It shocked me because it was so bad.
Also they didn't subvert formula, they nicked the ending of a 11 year old game (Deus Ex) which was completely different in tone from their game, and put it on the end, hoping that people would like it cos it's "arty".
Hey, captain allcaps.Hyper-space said:
I hate unicorn chasers. I wrote a long spiel that made it to 10 pages on these forums about a year ago blasting Bioware for their overly simplistic, black and white narratives. I practically begged for something more sophisticated, more high brow, more grey and grey, something I could sink my teeth into. For me, Shepard NEEDED to die to bring closure to the series.
It doesn't have anything to do with the ending being happy or not happy.
It has everything to do with the ending being terrible, confusing, lazily slapped together, and contradicting the thematic spirit of the game.
I thought DA:O's plot was silly, and it's ending was formulaic and trite. And I'd take it 1000 times out of 1000 over the ME3 ending.
I really wish people would stop claiming they copy pasted the ending from Deus Ex. Yeah, there was some transhumanism robble airlifted in at the last moment for god knows why, but these were nothing like the DE endings. The DE endings made sense, and honored the spirit of the story that preceded them.endtherapture said:
That's exactly why they don't work.BloatedGuppy said:
The DE endings worked in De, because it was DE, and not ME3. The ME universe and storyline did not need all the metaphysical creators legends transhumans synthetic rubbish because it was marketed and set up as a "save the Earth" story. DE ending doesn't work in ME3, just like a DE ending would not work in Lord of the Rings, they're completely different types of fiction.
Let's put it this way: sometimes a mutation does something cool, like making you immune to cholesterol. Other times, it means you're born with hands for feet.Hyper-space said:
We praise games like Twitcher and Bioshock for subverting or playing with our storytelling expectations because they do so in an intelligent manner. Kane and Lynch 2 doesn't get the same praise, despite the fact that it also subverts storytelling expectations, because it doesn't do anything interesting, useful, or worthwhile with the subversion. It's not enough to just not do what many other people are doing - you've got to not do what other people are doing for a reason.
(Also, as mentioned earlier by many people, this is less of a subversion of the formula and more an appropriation of Deus Ex's formula, which by all accounts works about as well in the Mass Effect universe as a "yay the foozle is dead you are an winnar" ending would work in Deus Ex.)
My analogy would be it's like taking the ending of Star Wars and putting it in Star Trek.endtherapture said:
"The Huge mulit-planet space organization has been destroyed!"
Star Wars = "The Empire is gone YAY"
Star Trek = "Wait, the Federation was GOOD wasn't it?"
The issue was not the "sacrifice" thing - I think most people figured Shep was going to do a heroic sacrifice for at least some (if not all) of the endings. The issue is that many people felt like the ending didn't fit with the tone of the series. I haven't played most of the series, and I don't intend to play ME3, so I can't speak to whether I personally found it tonally inconsistent. But there are a lot of people who played the entire series and found it tonally inconsistent, and I think that there's definitely a take-away message from that reaction.MisterShine said:
It might be more accurate to say that the series has a wide variety of possible tones. A playthrough where most of Shep's crew died on the suicide mission is very tonally different from a "suicide mission? More like homicide mission amirite?" playthrough. This essay [http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-848] makes a very good case for the ending being thematically inconsistent with many playthroughs, and by the same token we might be able to make a case for it being tonally inconsistent with many playthroughs.
I dunno, the Federation and the Empire are two different things so I'm not sure what you're saying. The Maquis finally defeating the Federation or something? I dont know.Merrick_HLC said:
It's the fact that ME was a space opera through and through, so it should have had a space opera like ending. It didn't need to be like a Disney film, trillions of people had died. Shepard could've sacrificed himself, any squadmate could have, but it should have been a triumphant ending with horribly large losses (if you played your cards right obviously).
But we got a weird artsy transhumanist ending with this weird catalsy kid that lived in the Citadel and controlled everytihng apparently despite not even being foreshadowed before, it was stupid and out of place with everything that Mass Effect had been built up to at that point.
Also whilst we're at it...why did we only get to talk to 1 Reaper in the game for like 3 minutes? No final confrontation with Harbinger? No main Reaper antagonist. That was weak, there was no presence of a main villain like Sovereign, Saren or Harbinger. That was also poo.
Former Bioware employees tearing this thing apart? That should be a good indication of how deep in the shit we are.
Which goes against everything that ME3's ending was. Because apparently Bioware thinks that if an ending is dark that automatically makes it good.DustyDrB said:
exactly this, i worked my ass off in the first two games to get that supreme *mostly* happy ending, it was about over coming the "impossible", and to have that absolutely shit upon in the 3rd games ending...Dandark said:
disappointment. to the highest degree. hell for the past 4-5 years that's all i've looked forward to each time i replayed me 1 and 2, was importing all my saves and seeing how things worked out, because these were MY stories, but then they get all bottlenecked up and promises were broken by EA/bioware.
also, what is the problem with having the CHOICE of a "happyish" ending? they promised not just arbitrary A/B/C ending, why not have a fucking hard as hell happy ending to get, then also have all the other ones? isn't that the point of what everyone was looking forward to?
that's exactly what i was thinking, have it be like in the beginning of the new star trek movie where george kirk rams the kelvin into the narada (romulan ship)Merrick_HLC said:
A depressing ending to a video game can work only if it's one of several others, or you have a helluva writing talent. Shit, even Max Payne 2 had a better ending if you finished it on the hardest difficulty.
And more importantly, this is a RPG, it's about choices and consequences. ME2 did good in that, killing off your party members if you weren't prepared and didn't use them appropriately. Sure, most would just jump through all the hoops to keep everyone alive, and that makes them happy, some would kill certain members, or all of them, including Shepard, and that makes them happy. It's all good, it's up to the player.
But ending an RPG trilogy with three different-colored explosions and dozens of plotholes and unanswered questions is just idiotic. If this was intended, it was to sell DLC, no other reason.
And more importantly, this is a RPG, it's about choices and consequences. ME2 did good in that, killing off your party members if you weren't prepared and didn't use them appropriately. Sure, most would just jump through all the hoops to keep everyone alive, and that makes them happy, some would kill certain members, or all of them, including Shepard, and that makes them happy. It's all good, it's up to the player.
But ending an RPG trilogy with three different-colored explosions and dozens of plotholes and unanswered questions is just idiotic. If this was intended, it was to sell DLC, no other reason.
This is my strongest issue with the ME3 ending; the first play through I watched was done by a guy who was just going as fast as he could to record and throw up a play through on youtube. He did horribly and launched the final sequence as early as he could. When he fell, I thought 'See, that's how it should have ended, I- wait, he's.. getting up? Seriously? This is the corridor every ending is shoe horned into, from 100% to barely qualifies?'Merrick_HLC said:
Regarding the OP, I hate how we're constantly getting these 'And gamers want to feel good about themselves' getting injected into the discussion; the problems were Legion (no pun intended).