The Big Picture: Mutants and Masses

[Reaper69lol]

MovieBob is still missing the point that BioWare didn't deliver on ANY of their promises. Thus customers were mislead, into buying something they thought would be one thing, but turned out to be something completely different and infested with plotholes.

 

[Yeager942]

So once again Bob doesn't understand the difference between games and movies. And misrepresents the retake ME movement. Standard stuff from him them.

Considering people are demanding donations back, making death threats and making BBB complaints over it, hes a bit justified. Hes just saying those above three make all fans of something look bad.

Aren't we kind of above letting a few bad eggs define the whole group? Isn't that the entire point of the "Gamers aren't basement dwellers, don't let the few 12 year olds on xbox live define us" argument?" If Bob lets the few wackos define the Retake Group, then that's being a hypocritical.

I'm honestly shocked how little Bob has looked into this conflict. He's honestly one of my favorite contributors to the Escapist, but his ignorance in this matter is pretty appalling.

 

[permacrete]

He didn't tell you to not voice your opinion you muppet so stop putting words in people's mouths. Moviebob is of the opinion that if you didn't like the ending you should make that painfully clear. However, that will never give you the right to demand a new ending. And for your information Arthur Conan Doyle didn't bring back Holmes because of his fans, he brought him back because his mum asked him to. Maybe you could read a little more before talking about what you know nothing about next time. Then again, you don't really listen to whatever anybody else says so why would you listen to me?

Let's just be clear about one thing here - BioWare asked. Yes, they did.

One of the characteristics of recent BioWare games is the DLC that is made available after release. One of the things that BioWare does is ask for--and consider--fan feedback for their DLC. They're kind of known for it. Fans asking for DLC that adds more options to the ending, or makes the ending make sense, or just makes the ending suck less, has to be considered within that context.

DLC changes the game. The only DLC currently available for Mass Effect 3 adds a new character available as a member of your squad for almost all missions who adds story context on certain missions (like Thessia) that fills out the story. Other developers have offered DLC that completely changed the ending of their games.

When BioWare asks what DLC their fans want to see, and the fans respond that they want something like "Broken Steel," who the hell are these reviewers to come in and criticize? BioWare is always free to stop listening, you know.

 

[VyseN1]

Hey Bob, try doing a little research next time first. Stop lumping everyone in with the fringe groups. Your ego is getting planet sized now.

 

[Sentox6]

You got burned, but you entered into the social contract, you signed on the dotted line.

Generally I try to be polite whenever possible, but nothing short of mocking derision really suffices here. You should not be wielding these sorts of concepts if you have absolutely no idea of their meaning or the context to which they belong.

 

[jamesbrown]

I have said it before and I will say it again: What was so bad about the ME3 ending?

I don't know whether or not this has been replied to, but thank you for being polite

The main reason this whole debacale occured is because of an built up emphasis on YOU and YOUR CHOICES thoughout the series, ME3 ending though doesn't emphasize YOUR CHOICES insted it does something really weird and makes all of those choices moot and kills the universe at the same time, thus the ending (it is also the climax) is non-reflective of the 130+ hours piece of art that is Mass Effect.

All the fans are doing is telling bioware they can make it amazing, and giving them the chance to fix it; sometimes quality trumps artistic integrity; which is why you never could sell a picture of stick figures- even though you think it is the best picture in the entire world

Analogy:
Books: building a great story, then just as the climax happens; an astroid hits

Movies: Just as the hero is beating up the bad guy or getting the love intrest, an criminal comes up to him and kills him, then it shows the L.I with someone else, or the bad guy robbing a bank; CREDITS

Painting: Just as the masterpiece is finished the artist puts a stick figure over a central part of the painting

 

[Darkness665]

@Gxas Excellent observation!

 

[dartkun]

Only episode of any of Movie Bob's that I disliked.

ME3 fans are angry they got lied to, told their decisions would have an effect at the end, blah blah blah, someone else has already said it better.

I am speechless...kudos to Movie Bob, but holy cow, it's like he laid it all out and then everyone on the Escapist (and that facebook thingy) went ahead and decided to carry out a live demonstration of crazed, maniacal fans at work.

You know, I absolutely hate this.

I live in a primarily white neighborhood, and in my school there was only one black kid. Everyone would constantly say (even the teachers) that blacks are such aggressive beasts. I'm not joking. They would constantly put him down, and say blacks are always so angry.

It bugged this poor kid that he got bullied by everyone just based on his race, one day he punched a kid who was mocking him in the face 3 times.

He got suspended, and everyone just said "See, blacks are angry and violent".

I propose a question, what disagreement statement could I say that wouldn't be called "a demonstration of crazed, maniacal fans at work". If I agree with the premise, I'm fine. If I disagree, I'm a fanboy.

Because, I'm a very casual player of Mass Effect, I like the series, and I like the games. But I really don't like being lied to by devs, and being told it wouldn't just be an ABC ending, and then it was.

 

[mfeff]

Shepard is written with a Hesiod-ic. A Cassandra Syndrome, "the kid" is for-shadowing, to the inevitable conclusion. A Chekov's gun.

The Dream Sequences, are tropes from Gaius Baltar of BSG, complete with many other rip's of that franchise. Hall of the Dead, "It's in the Frakin Ship", Kera Thrace "Kara Remembers" so on and so forth. Gaius isn't convinced that he "ISN'T a cylon, until much later in the BSG story?.

When everything is revealed.

We never got the reveal. So we are left with a plot hole.

He is convinced that "God's Hand" is at work, as he frequently has visions of 6, just as Shep has visions of the God A.I. Gaius also IS an angel for the Cylon's 6 but this is never seen in the ME universe. So all we have is a 1 sided version.

Indoctrination, to me, is a vestigial tail, like dark energy, that was never fully realized in any meaningful or coherent way. Had it of been, we could of witnessed a trope of the Cassandra Syndrome, played in reverse, and had Shepard call BS on the "Hand of God" fate.

But that would be contrary to the "massive" retcon's of the universe given in ME3.

(It would of been sweet though) a true M. Night Shyamalan moment, but no, that is not what happens.

We could go with Philip K. Dick, and say "Total Recall", but that hurts more than helps in many respects. "If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up".

The catalyst, like the Trojan Horse, could be seen as the "final solution", but we have to know some Greek myth stories to really work that angle. Unfortunately, it ITSELF has to be "self-created", which in turn makes the case that it created the reapers.

Another plot hole. As no exposition is given as to WHY the catalyst exist in the first place, other than "it chooses to be".

That "it" had this plan all along, is plausible, if we simply accept that Shepard, is the chosen one, the Ubermensch a "Roy Batty vs. Tyrel", Lobster-Buddha, or Robo-Genetic-Jesus. This gets us into some "hard determinism" and "predestination" problems on both philosophical levels, and narrative levels. It happens when we play with Deus Ex Machina literary devices.

The cycle is no cycle, once the supreme organic comes to the rescue... again, a metaphysical problem, as the God A.I. never posits "why" organic life is important on any level.

What is so special about Shepard? Is he messianic or not?

We choose Ubermensch and "God" is dead. Cycle is broken. For a time? Who knows? -Roy Batty- Bladerunner- was Harrison Ford a replicant?

We choose Buddha, and we go to the void, with the reapers, as a reaper, and we escape Samsara. Samsara still exist, but WE get out. - Babylon 5 Sheridan Experience (this is rather contrary to Buddhist teachings though). Pop Culture version... go figure.

We choose Genetic Jesus, problem solved, diversity is ended, A.I. is no longer a threat, as it is no longer divergent from "God's Plan". - Battle Star Galactica - Hera

Legion helps us with this... but the "end game" writers, perhaps pressed for time, perhaps not as well versed as they could of been, ignore that explanation.

We just have to accept it. Just as Shepard, free from agency, has to accept "God's" explanation.

Alas, what we have is the Hesiod argument that even Zeus, cannot bend Fate for Achilles. Much as with any messianic archetype, Shep, has to kick the bucket. The "breath" plays off the Matrix - Neo ending, which in some ways could be seen as acknowledging the material, but taking it a different direction.

What is the God kid, other than Col. Sanders from the Matrix?

It struck me as last minute.

I would also add that we never fully see the destruction of the citadel, just the catalyst core.

I find the whole thing sloppy, poorly handled, poorly written... but that's my take.

There was (to me) a better narrative here... and it just slipped through the collective fingers of the writing staff.

Sorry... I guess?

 

[Nicolairigel]

I sort of liked the ending, more I liked the idea of the ending, but I don't think that Bioware handled it too well in the closure department. It is very important to note, Bob, that Bioware never said it was "changing" the ending, more they're adding onto it to give fans more closure.

That being said, yeah, people REALLY need to calm down about the ending. Yes, it was and a, b, c, or d choice, which they said it wouldn't be. Was it lying? Well, from what I hear, most of the bioware team wasn't too happy with the ending, so they might have planned to have not such a simple ending. I cannot see why people are saying how it destroys the series, even if the ending was as bad as they make it out to be, It still wouldn't ruin the entire series for me.

 

[Frozengale]

You got burned, but you entered into the social contract, you signed on the dotted line.

Generally I try to be polite whenever possible, but nothing short of mocking derision really suffices here. You should not be wielding these sorts of concepts if you have absolutely no idea of their meaning or the context to which they belong.

Sorry I used the wrong term. Sue me, and whine more. What I was trying to say is that when you buy the game, you are accepting it as it is. People were saying that Bioware was breaking promises, but that isn't true. They promised a game, they gave the consumer a game. The promise was kept, the figurative "contract" was upheld. That's why I used that term, I forgot it meant something else. When a consumer buys a product they are legally obligated to receive the item. Bioware promised this and delivered. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that you deserve something else.


So please forgive me oh wise internet guru, I will now go scourge myself because obviously in your eyes misusing a term is a horrible sin.

EDIT- I just realized I shouldn't have said "Sue me". I'm dealing with Mass Effect people here. They might actually try to do so.

 

[Knight Templar]

Bob I don't agree with movements like "Retake Mass Effect", but if you think that these two scenarios are comparable then you have fundamentally failed to understand the situation.
I don't think the issue is because you have not really paid attention to the games, I think it's because you didn't pay attention to Bioware.

 

[DrWilhelm]

How can a game get perfect scores and nobody except those that reviewed after release date mentions this? Because it exposes a conflict of interest between game reviewers and game companies.

This, I beieve, is the important point to take away from the debacle, not this nonsense about "whiny" fans, as it further exposes the likelihood that something is horribly rotten with game journalism. Were Mass Effect 3 a book or a film, many critics would have savaged the ending, yet I don't recall reading a single review on release day that addressed even one of the dozens of issues with the ending. I'm not saying that the endings are objectively bad, but look at the Escapists own review. Not a single moment of attention is given to the ending, unless one counts a brief "it's the ending the series deserves" in the opening paragraph, which is more likely just a comment on the game as a whole. Surely such an important part of a finale, whether good or bad, is worthy of more analysis than that?

Then as the fans get uppity, the industry media at large opens up with a broadside of ad hominems, absurd strawmen and bogus appeals to artistic integrity, the latter of which is particularly laughable when one considers the furor surrounding Mass Effect: Deception, not two months before ME3's release. For those who may have forgotten, Bioware released a book riddled with an insane number of continuity and canon discrepancies, there was a huge fan outcry, and Bioware apologised and pledged to have the book rewritten. I don't recall anyone rallying to the defence of William C. Dietz's artistic freedom, nor did I see any hysterical slippery slope arguments about setting novels back a decade as an artform, and yet the situations are far from incomparable.

The whole situation indicates to me that the mainstream reviewers either fail to notice the problems with the ending, or are unwilling to bite the hand that feeds. When the only explanations are incompetence or complicity... well, as I said before; something is rotten.

As a minor but related digression, I personally see the anger directed at the ending as vindication for the games-as-art crowd. Look at what most of us are arguing about. It isn't the gameplay, it's the story. We're arguing over the games artistic merits. We're treating it as though it were any other piece of art. We're expecting a game to live up to the narrative standards of books and films. Is that not a good thing?

Digression 2; I'd just finished writing the above when my laptop decided to restart. Not to update, just a random unprompted restart. Thankfully what I'd written remained when I reopened firefox, otherwise I suspect my rage levels would have reached the fiery peaks of the more virulent commenters on the ending subject.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well, from what I hear, most of the bioware team wasn't too happy with the ending, so they might have planned to have not such a simple ending.

Most of the quotes come from Casey Hudson, the project director. Most of the dissatisfaction (which is rumoured) came from the WRITERS.

So the people making the promises (largely, person) were the ones (one) least in a position for that to work. And the writers being dissatisfied, if true, does not make any of this less a lie.

honestly i thought it was about the money.

The reason is inconclusive, though I told my mum the "his mom made him do it" one, because it would amuse her.

However, I will posit this to those who say "the fans weren't responsible:"

Arthur Conan Doyle made a choice that, if played fairly and equally in context to Mass Effect 3 getting a new ending, would have been considered by the same people to be "caving in" and "hurting the media's artistic integrity."

Doyle had a choice, and so does the Bioware team. They can listen to the fans or not, but if the internet were around during Doyle's time, he might well have received identical criticism, regardless.

It's ultimately their choice, but they would be wise to listen when this many fans are outraged. Just ignore the Moviebob strawman that people were unhappy because the ending was not to their exact specifications. And Doyle may have done it for the money, since he could pretty much write his own check at that point. The tricky thing is, the most circulated stories about him (for the fans, for the money, for his mum) all have one thing in common:

They were not for the art. The crux of the original message nested in the quotes would point against the whole "artistic integrity" thing.

This seems a bigger issue than specifically whether he did it for the fans or the cash.

 

[Sagacious Zhu]

Has Re-take Mass Effect gone too far?

Maybe.

But defending a shoddy, lazy final product under the banner of "artistic integrity" is just plain wrong. All art is created for an audience; this is doubly so for "art" that is meant to be consumed by a large audience. If said "art" fails to connect or resonate with the audience, it has failed.

Secondly, Bob falls into the Video Games=Movies logical trap. Video games audiences differ from cinema on a functional level; watching a two hour movie is a very different experience than playing a 20+ hour video game. Gamers are used to shaping stories more actively and expect the freedom to do so.

Finally, on a commercial level, Bioware cannot afford to plug their ears go "LA LA LA, ARTISTIC INGEGRITY 2DEEP4U!" A Sizable chunk of their customer base is pissed off and seriously disinclined to support future Bioware games. Do they need to change the ending? No. But they can't just go into full denial mode. They have to address this. They have to please their customers or they might not have customers to screw over in the future.

 

[Trishbot]

Wait.

"Artists need to be able to take risks as freely as possible."

Since when? I make video games. Trust me, COMMERCIAL ART is for the player's enjoyment, NOT OURS. And if they want it changed, we CHANGE it.

Shakespeare changed his plays due to audience reactions. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead after fans demanded he undo the death. Charles Dickens wrote a happier ending to "Great Expectations" after his readers expressed their dissatisfaction with it. Herman Melville added in a chapter of "Moby Dick" to fix plotholes and plot threads he overlooked.

Leonardo Da Vinci was paid to make 99% of his art, and there are hundreds of rejected drafts that his patrons disliked before they found the draft they did like. He was a slave to the whims of the people paying for his art and skill.

People have invested a great deal of time and money into the Mass Effect universe, and, here's a big point, GAMES are NOT movies, books, and paintings. They are not passive. You can't just watch them. You have to INTERACT with a game, invest in it, immerse yourself in it. YOU are the key character of the fiction, and as such you DO have an artistic stake of ownership since the game would not BE a game without a player to play it.

That doesn't mean games must give you all the options you demand, but Shigeru Miyamoto himself stated to us developers that "a good game will give players the freedom to play the game the way they want to play it."

Mass Effect 3 is a bad ending. A very bad ending. Worse, it's a bad GAME ending. It strips away all the player interaction to funnel players down a path that is counter to the vast majority of people's playstyles. However you play the game, your character pulls a heel-turn in the final 10 minutes to willingly annihilate the universe fans have grown to love against all the player's wishes. It violates its own writer-reader non-verbal contract and denies players the catharsis and reward that a roleplaying game entails.

That doesn't mean the game isn't happy, or sad, or what. It just means it strips away the payoff; that makes it a bad game. It is like a Mario game without Princess Peach at the end. It fails on a narrative and gameplay level and ceases to be either a good game or a good story, which is problematic considering everything up to the final 10 minutes of the series has been running counter to that.

Even now, go to the website of the game. "Decide how it ends" the website claims. But, the thing is, you can't. The ending is pre-determined, nihilistic, and no amount of talent, skill, or time commitment wins you the freedom of choice to decide your own fate, which has been the theme of the entire series up to those final few moments.

Games are not books. They are not movies. They are not comics and they are not music CDs or tv shows. They require players claim an artistic stake of ownership and become the role they play. They don't passively watch the hero; they ARE the hero.

When I make games as a developer, that is the most important thing to remember. I disagree with MovieBob on this one. I make games, and I don't violate my "artistic integrity" when I give players the options to form their own narrative paths, even if their path would be different than my original intentions.

If anything, I find giving players the power of choice in a game is an art in and of itself, a skill so few can successfully manage and execute. I find choice and player ownership to be something so much more powerful than any other form of art, because it is the only art that allows people to form their own personal, intimate relationships in a game universe on such a powerfully effective and influential scale.

That is the art of games; not the graphics, not the level design, not the hardware power, and certainly not the rulebook of movies. It is the part of games that no other medium can touch; it is the power of player choice and player ownership. And it's a beautiful, frightening, and glorious thing to explore in this industry.

 

[RaikuFA]

So once again Bob doesn't understand the difference between games and movies. And misrepresents the retake ME movement. Standard stuff from him them.

Considering people are demanding donations back, making death threats and making BBB complaints over it, hes a bit justified. Hes just saying those above three make all fans of something look bad.

Aren't we kind of above letting a few bad eggs define the whole group? Isn't that the entire point of the "Gamers aren't basement dwellers, don't let the few 12 year olds on xbox live define us" argument?" If Bob lets the few wackos define the Retake Group, then that's being a hypocritical.

I'm honestly shocked how little Bob has looked into this conflict. He's honestly one of my favorite contributors to the Escapist, but his ignorance in this matter is pretty appalling.

True, true. What needs to be done is the people who are considered the good people of the movement to go "Those people? The ones demanding donations back and such? They don't represent us at all."

Easing up on the personal attacks against people who don't get it(one person told me I'll never get how mad you guys are because I play JRPGs and that somehow makes ALL my opinions invalid)and calling people hypocrytical strawmen just for disagreeing with you dosen't help your cause.

 

[luckshot]

so naturally bob is against movie test screenings that can result in changes to movies right, because that would be changing art.

you've been missing the point for a while. go read some of the things the game makers promised pre release then watch the ending