Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread [Spoiler tag free, beware]

[Simond]

C-Monster gets the automatic "Used to write for Amiga Power" pass from me, though. We could really use another magazine/site/etc. like AP, to be honest.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't blame the reviewers. They largely work in an industry that cannot offer them the working conditions they need to objectively review games anyway.

If the livelihood of your whole publication depends on advertising dollars by EA or Activision then this will have an effect on your reviews if not on purpose than at least subconsciously.

Hell the largest German game mag got blacklisted by ID for three years because they ACCIDENTALLY broke an embargo for a game nobody cared much about anyway.

It's the same with any kind of entertainment really, only reviewers on the lists of PR people get invited to press screenings, only well received reviewers get copies of the latest novels etc. pp.

If you get a review copy of anything chances are that PR purposefully sent it to you because you fit into their marketing plan for it.

That's why the first week is so important for studios, by the second week all reviews are published even those of the people that didn't get invited to press screenings and word of mouth has gotten around.

Take any metacritic entry and compare the score from launch week and compare it to the score three weeks later, the second score will almost always be much lower.

[Jeff Kelly]

What's problematic is that game reviewers always want to review all games that are published.

I know of no other review discipline that does that or even tries to do that.

Not even big shot magazines in other businesses try that. Ebert would go nuts if he had to review every movie that launches in any given month and even behemoths like car and driver or specialist magazines in other fields don't and won't do that.

It's also easier to survive if you're "columnist responsible for X" in a newspaper or magazine than it is if you are working for an indutry publication.

It's teling that the guy from forbes magazine or people like Yahtzee are probably the most unbiased reviewers around.

[Paelos]

Here's the thing. You have an obvious demographic of users that play games. Why bother as a reviewing magazine or site to promote the games when in fact there are so many other industries that want to tap that market? If you do it right, you could get sponsorships from Gilette, Coke, Pepsi, all the fast food distributors, auto makers, shit, who doesn't want to hit the 16-40 male demographic with disposable income?

[Jeff Kelly]

That's because the industry is woefully out of touch with their target demographic.

The same people that defend the misogynistic banter and all out bad behaviour at video game events or the infantile content wonder why there are less women gamers than men. The people who review games are now themselves 40 with kids yet wonder why their demo doesn't have that much time to finish 100+ hour games. The same people that critisize the business for not innovating celebrate the umpteenth version of "Shoot the bad guys!"

They still see their demo as guys age 14 - 25 because they still see themselves largely as guys i their twenties even if they are 40 with wife, kids and mortgage.

A problem not only with editors but also with game developers.

[Velorath]

It really is weird how the whole payola thing never gets discussed when it's so patently obvious and Gurstman's firing literally proved it. They ran tons of ads for Kane and Lynch, Gurstman gave it a shitty review because it was a bad game, he got fired.

Publishers pay the big sites for good reviews for major AAA titles...and no one really cares.

It's been discussed at length, and from the sounds of it isn't a direct "big sites pay for good reviews thing".  If the Gerstmann thing proved anything, it's that it kinda sticks out pretty easily when things do get to that point.   People love to so it's the most commonly speculated reason why games like ME3 which have some big issues (despite being great games) get really high review scores, but the easier explanation is most people with actual writing talent would rather be doing something other than working in games journalism, and a lot of writers pander to the audiences.

For a long discussion about Gerstmann and the dependency game sites have on Publishers for advertising and access, check out GFW Radio's 12/05/07 show.  They also do a pretty good rant about review scores and audience expectations on the 11/3/07 show (around the 1:27:30 mark) where Shawn Elliott reacts to the response he got from his Crysis review when he gave it the "low" score of 8 out of 10.

[Velorath]

They still see their demo as guys age 14 - 25 because they still see themselves largely as guys i their twenties even if they are 40 with wife, kids and mortgage.

Look at most of the big video game message boards (Gamefaqs, NeoGAF, the comment sections at pretty much any game site), and I think you'll see that by and large, guys age 14-25 still are the demo by and large.

[Paelos]

It's fine if guys age 14-25 are the demo. I don't really care. The point is that even if that's the case, they don't just spend money on games. They spend it on a ton of other stupid crap as well, and you can get those companies to sponsor your site. If you get Red Bull involved, you don't have to give a review on Red Bull. There's no dependence there, and you can be known as a place of actual objective knowledge, which in turn gets you more eyeballs and sponsors.

In other words, lacking independence hurts you in the long run.

[Riggswolfe]

They still see their demo as guys age 14 - 25 because they still see themselves largely as guys i their twenties even if they are 40 with wife, kids and mortgage.

Look at most of the big video game message boards (Gamefaqs, NeoGAF, the comment sections at pretty much any game site), and I think you'll see that by and large, guys age 14-25 still are the demo by and large.

Actually, the average gamer is in his 30s now. The average age of the guy posting at GameFaqs and other gaming forums? Probably much lower.

[Fordel]

Or 30-40 somethings are a lot dumber then most people want to admit. 

[Velorath]

It's fine if guys age 14-25 are the demo. I don't really care. The point is that even if that's the case, they don't just spend money on games. They spend it on a ton of other stupid crap as well, and you can get those companies to sponsor your site. If you get Red Bull involved, you don't have to give a review on Red Bull. There's no dependence there, and you can be known as a place of actual objective knowledge, which in turn gets you more eyeballs and sponsors.

In other words, lacking independence hurts you in the long run.

I'm not sure if you can get those companies to sponsor a video game website, because I'd be willing to bet that most sites have tried (I don't think any of them would turn down money from Coke, Red Bull, Nike or whatever).  About the best it looks like anybody can manage for ads that aren't for games, are just random ads like AdChoices and such.  There's also an ad for Wrath of the Titans on Gamespot right now, but for the most part, the impression I get is that game magazines (the few that are left) and sites don't seem like a big priority for advertising.  The actual number of readers the average game site has I'd imagine is relatively small, especially since there are so many game sites out there fighting for readers.

[Paelos]

Well I think part of it is a classic chicken or the egg argument. If you have a central area that's respected for gaming, you have the readership. However, you can't get big enough to be respected without selling out for dollars.

[Jeff Kelly]

Just finished the game for the second time. End still sucks donkey balls. The most confusing thing to me is still that obviously everybody at Bioware and most people in the press don't take issue with the end.

Don't really care about DLC for this game anymore, for all I care they just shouldn't bother.

[Ingmar]

Sometimes I really don't get you people. Complain bitterly about how this was the worst gaming experience you've ever had, turn around and sink 30 hours into a second playthrough.

[taolurker]

Sometimes I really don't get you people. Complain bitterly about how this was the worst gaming experience you've ever had, turn around and sink 30 hours into a second playthrough.

[luckton]

Spinning Normady

Damn you.  Now my wife thinks I'm crazy 

[Lantyssa]

She only figured that out now?

[caladein]

Sometimes I really don't get you people. Complain bitterly about how this was the worst gaming experience you've ever had, turn around and sink 30 hours into a second playthrough.

I'm with you.  Furthermore, I'm actually pretty terrible about finishing games as I tend to bail on them as soon as I stop enjoying them.

[tmp]

Sometimes I really don't get you people. Complain bitterly about how this was the worst gaming experience you've ever had, turn around and sink 30 hours into a second playthrough.

Haven't you played enough MMOs to be intimately familiar with this behaviour?

(DAT spinning Normandy <3

[Jeff Kelly]

Well the game up to a certain point is pretty good and I wanted to really check if there is something to the argument that people like me just didn't like the way the game ends and just use the end as a reasoning.

...and the game is pretty great if flawed at times, it's just that the end is now even more glaringly bad. You simply cannot argue that the Reapers are anything other than evil. They do not "uplift" civilizations because all "reaper-fied" organics you meet are just zombies bereft of anything resembling a soul or a free will. Also for every person that gets indoctrinated 100 are killed and the reapers commit every crime against the living you can.

They are even modelled after parasites with their insect-like bodies and mandibles.

It's the same disconnect as with ME 2 where the first question of most fans was why they should be working with such a despicable and incompetent organisation as Cerberus. They explained it better but half the missions seemed to be cleaniing up messes TIM left behind and despicably so at that.

They even reference that everybody that tried the things you are to do at the end failed and paid with his life or the life of billions for it. Not once but twice or more. So they even contradict themselves multiple times.

The game is pretty good right until Priority: Thessia and it goes rapidly downhill by the time you meet Emo Cyborg Ninja from Cerberus with his plot armor for the second time. It's telling because it's a situation where I wouldn't have failed if it was a game sequence and not some kind of interactive cinematic. Worse if it was me instead of Kai Lang I'd be dead long before I'd manage to escape. They abandoned their own game mechanics and universe rules because they wanted to tell their story no matter what.

After that they don't even try to explain anything by any other means than "a space wizard did it".

I also checked if the "indoctrination" theory had any merit and as we all knew beforehand it doesn't. There are multiple ways you can die in the final scenes that are cross-referenced to real world events such as the Crucible being destroyed which wouldn't make sense if it was all just a dreamlike state so you have to physically be on the citadel as the events unfold. The "black effect" people mentioned is only visible when TIM tries to control you with his own version of the indoctrination (for example right at the time you shoot Anderson) so it's probably just a visual cue to tell you that you are being controlled etc.

The renegade path through the final conversation with TIM does make a lot more sense than the Paragon path because in the Renegade discussion you encourage TIM to seize the opportunity and he himself realizes that he can't because he is controlled by the reapers. More powerful than you trying to convince him as Paragon.

No the end has as many frayed ends and holes as an old pair of socks and it doesn't really gel with the rest of the game's story at all.

It's just maddening because if they wanted to go there they wouldn't have needed that much to make it a great end.

[Fabricated]

I've been watching most of the major cutscenes leading to the end and the writing is actually pretty good. It really is just the ending that makes all of that stuff before it feel utterly pointless.

[SurfD]

I've been watching most of the major cutscenes leading to the end and the writing is actually pretty good. It really is just the ending that makes all of that stuff before it feel utterly pointless.

So it is sort of like sitting down at a fancy restaurant, getting a superb 4 course meal, and then having the waiter wheel out a bowl of shit for desert.

[Fabricated]

I've been watching most of the major cutscenes leading to the end and the writing is actually pretty good. It really is just the ending that makes all of that stuff before it feel utterly pointless.

So it is sort of like sitting down at a fancy restaurant, getting a superb 4 course meal, and then having the waiter wheel out a bowl of shit for desert.

Nah, you can refuse to eat dessert and go home pretty satisfied.

This is like eating a great four-course meal, then getting home and getting violently ill because the cook didn't wash his hands.

It's retarded to stretch a metaphor so far but this actually kinda made me laugh thinking about it so I'll say it anyway: the meal was pointless because you vomited it all up. You got no value from it nutritionally, and no value from it in terms of memories because well you got to "enjoy" the taste of it on the way back up so now trying to remember it evokes those smell/taste memories instead of the good ones.

[luckton]

Nah, you can refuse to eat dessert and go home pretty satisfied.

This is like eating a great four-course meal, then getting home and getting violently ill because the cook didn't wash his hands.

It's retarded to stretch a metaphor so far but this actually kinda made me laugh thinking about it so I'll say it anyway: the meal was pointless because you vomited it all up. You got no value from it nutritionally, and no value from it in terms of memories because well you got to "enjoy" the taste of it on the way back up so now trying to remember it evokes those smell/taste memories instead of the good ones.

Stretchy as the metaphor is, you basically summarize the argument nicely.   

[Jeff Kelly]

Yeah and the manager and health department claim they don't get why you are upset because 90% of your experience was great so you shouldn't judge your meal on the final 10%.

Also you're only upset because throwing up violently didn't live up to how you imagined the evening to end but you probably wouldn't have liked any better conclusion to this evening anyway because you were so psyched about the great meal before.

[Fabricated]

Okay, now THAT is stretching the metaphor. 

[Thrawn]

Yeah and the manager and health department claim they don't get why you are upset because 90% of your experience was great so you shouldn't judge your meal on the final 10%.

Also you're only upset because throwing up violently didn't live up to how you imagined the evening to end but you probably wouldn't have liked any better conclusion to this evening anyway because you were so psyched about the great meal before.

Don't forget to add that some other fans of the restaurant come up with an in-depth theory of how you just didn't understand the deeper hidden meaning and true art of the experience and nothing was wrong.  

[Jeff Kelly]

Okay, now THAT is stretching the metaphor. 

I#ll see this one through to the bitter end 

[caladein]

Did we really just come back to a health & safety metaphor again?

[Sjofn]

While the ending is, indeed, still shitty, I found I didn't care as much the second time around. It did drive me to the DESTROY ending, though, because fuck you little kid, you're ruining my ending? I'm going to blow your ass up.

[Simond]

Has the CYOA ending fanfic thingy been posted here yet? I forget.
Anyway: http://www.writing.com/main/interact/item_id/1856999-Mass-Effect-Ending-Generator/map/1

Also: "It is not a thing you could comprehend" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wisHcuBzTCM

[Riggswolfe]

I also checked if the "indoctrination" theory had any merit and as we all knew beforehand it doesn't. There are multiple ways you can die in the final scenes that are cross-referenced to real world events such as the Crucible being destroyed which wouldn't make sense if it was all just a dreamlike state so you have to physically be on the citadel as the events unfold. The "black effect" people mentioned is only visible when TIM tries to control you with his own version of the indoctrination (for example right at the time you shoot Anderson) so it's probably just a visual cue to tell you that you are being controlled etc.

I'm not sure you understand the indoctrination theory to be blunt. If the indoctrination theory is true it plays out in one of two ways:

1) You were never on the Citadel at all and everything after the beam hits you is a complicated hallucination brought on as you struggle against the indoctrination. The only right choice is to choose destroy which represents you breaking the indoctrination and shows you the short waking up clip to symbolize that you've broken free and can resume the fight.

2) Everything more or less happened but the starchild is harbinger or another reaper. The entire sequence from the magic elevator and on is the Reaper's last ditch effort to indoctrinate you and keep you from pulling the trigger. Again, choosing destroy is the only real win scenario as the other two give the Reapers what they want. Synthesis in particular is hitting the "Reaper's win" button and control is nothing but an illusion much as it was with TIM.

In neither case does what happened with the real world events disprove indoctrination. In theory 1, none of those events actually happen and in theory 2, they happen but have a different meaning than the drivel Bioware gave us.

[Ratman_tf]

Speaking of food.



 

[Fabricated]

Eating the red cupcake symbolizes you breaking free of indoctrination.

[Velorath]

Yeah and the manager and health department claim they don't get why you are upset because 90% of your experience was great so you shouldn't judge your meal on the final 10%.

Also you're only upset because throwing up violently didn't live up to how you imagined the evening to end but you probably wouldn't have liked any better conclusion to this evening anyway because you were so psyched about the great meal before.

And then in your case, you went right back to the restaurant the next day for seconds.