khantron said:
SiskoBlue said:
I loved the entire mass effect series. Read the books, comics, done it all. I'm completely fine with the ending. I'm not sure what everybody expected but it was the ending I predicted. I could see the writing on the wall fairly early on. A bit like Red Dead Redemption. Doom was in the air.
The fact that the "multiple endings" was a bit of a con is absolutely in keeping with Mass Effect 1 & 2. Maybe other people don't see it but each Mass Effect has been a series of bottle necks with some expansion of plot between each node.
No matter WHAT you decide the outcome for every single mission is basically the same. Everyone destroys Sovereign and Saren in the first game. Everybody fights the giant baby terminator in ME2. Everybody does the exact same story missions and the only variation is a bit of dialogue and the "concept" that you picked A instead of B. Killed Wrex? Fine, you get a different Krogan and a bit of different dialogue in ME2. Effect on missions and gameplay and the outcome of other missions? = 0! Nothing, nada.
The Blue Paragon/Red Renegade is the biggest con of all. You need to get person X to do Y. You can sweet talk them with Blue option, result = you get Y. You can intimidate them with Red option, result = you get Y. Where exactly is the massive change in decisions.
I know "the means" is the interesting part and no "the ends" but at no point as Mass Effect even shown anything but a cursory nod towards "multiple-choices". The impact of even the most important choices from previous games result in a bit of dialogue difference, and maybe a footnote in the codex or war assets. As far as concluding subplots I can't see a single thing they didn't answer. Not sure what closure people are missing but no story, film, book, or game is going to list what happens to every single character at the end of a series. Unless it's LOTR and that's the worst part of the books.
I love Mass Effect but I never played it for the "multiple-choices". That's fluff, a thin icing on very lovely cake. Anyone saying Mass Effect set an expectation of multiple endings or massive changes in plot due to choices made is a complete liar or a fool. They've always said this stuff and it's never been true before. It's like CoD going on about "loads of new weapons and perks" when it's the same stuff rebranded and tweaked a bit. They've said this stuff from day one and at no point has a decision made in ME ever made much difference to the major story line. At least not a single change to the chain of events.
I can only presume these people only played ME2, and not ME1 and believed the hype about carrying your decisions over to the next game. Coupled with the fact that the series is ending (sad face) and that it's pretty damn obvious only sad endings are going to occur (how many missions in ME end with "Yeah! Everybody is happy"??) that left them feeling sad. Unable to comprehend or reflect on this new emotion produced by art they had a temper tantrum. You know, like a child does if his hero in a film dies.
You expected Shepard's entire motivation to change within 14 lines of dialogue. See it's not that the ending is overly grim, it's that it's not a culmination of everything Shepard's done up to this point as well as being poorly written. I suppose, unlike you, I thought that up until the end I thought Bioware were fairly good writers.
They are pretty good but they're not Umberto Eco or Kurt Vonnegut. I know lots of people like comic books but I find the plot lines and dialogue a bit too broadstroke. It has to be in comics, the subtlety and nuance is in the artwork, not the dialogue. Games seem to follow comic book style dialogue mostly (Not JRPGs though, they follow the "more is more" like a kid writing his first novel). Bioware are very good, but that doesn't stop them falling in to many of the same traps.
Here's something I haven't come across much, what ending for ME3 WOULD be great? And I don't mean plot points like "Shepherd kills all the reapers and everyone lives" I mean what actually should happen. How would you implement all those choices. People are complaining but I haven't seen a single useful, sensible suggestion about what they could have done.
As far as a culmination of shepherd's actions and decisions, his/her motivation has always been to stop the reapers from destroying all sapient life. Each ending does exactly that. Maybe people are missing the very real moral/philosophical conundrum of synthetic life. What happens when the machines we create surpass us? And when sapient nature is evolutionary bound to create synthetic life, what's the solution? A repeating cycle of growth and destruction to maintain equilibrium(Personally I think this is too much a copy of the Matrix plot but still a good question). Both franchises show that equilibriums are unlikely to last forever, so what's the solution? Which is exactly what faces Shepherd.
Take a look at Extra Credits Singularity episode (2 parter) to see why the ghost child "the catalyst" needs a solution. Interesting stuff.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-singularity
