synobal said:
boag said:
What consequences do your actions have on anyone that cant be retconned in the next game by saying "Well Time skip so this happened no matter what you did"?
That is true for any fictional universe, so I don't see what your point is.
The point is, this was the ending of a Trilogy, the ending closure is at direct contradiction with initial statement of the series, "Choices Matter".
If the choices you make ultimately play out to be null by an unavoidable event, then what is the point in even playing the game?
From a narrative perspective the ending is fine and makes total sense, but from an interactive perspective its a real bad idea to invalidate the players hard work by restricting all his options into 1 end game scenario that happens no matter what.
Lets compare ME 1 and ME 2s endings,
In ME1 the end game has you choose whether the council lives or dies, and who becomes the Councilor, these reflect immediate actions and set up the next game.
Starting ME 2 your choices begin to be reflected, and are continuously reflected through out the game, this is something that ME3 does very well in some aspects (Main Plot Characters referencing events from the 2 previous games) and very poorly in others (mail system tells you something you will never see happens and it doesnt reflect on the War Assets, EG Shiala).
The End game of ME2 is another set up, but with immediate repercussions to your end game in ME2, the decisions you make either keep characters alive or kill them, and the decision to destroy or keep the collector base affects on how the IM reacts to you in the last conversation.
Now ME3 starts off and does a lot of thing correctly, during the entire course of the game, your choices are reflected, like I pointed out before they are done well in some cases and poorly in others, However since the end game of the final Chapter of this game series does not give players a pay off, they will not see their choices come to matter in the final conclusion.
ME3 once again sets up for a sequel instead of giving the final pay off people were expecting, worse yet since the endings require a long time for anything to be set up again in the Galactic community of the in game universe, any choices you made can be completely made irrelevant by subsequent story rewrites. It resets most lore to 0, essentially ending the narrative universe that was created, but also setting up a sequel for the possibility seeing any result of your choices.
By Narrative terms, its an awesome idea, because you have basically established the lore of the future franchise with deep and rich meanings. However from an Interactive perspective, its asking people to buy the next game to see if any of the things you did in these 3 games will have even mattered.
That is what I find most disappointing, I wanted a pay off with the conclusion of this trilogy, not a set up to the next trilogy.